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[C&K] [Editorial] Modernize hyphenation and spelling
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<section id="chapter-1" epub:type="chapter">
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<h2>I</h2>
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<h3>“FOX-IN-THE-MORNING”<br/> </h3>
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<p>Coralio reclined, in the mid-day heat, like some vacuous beauty lounging in a guarded harem. The town lay at the sea’s edge on a strip of alluvial coast. It was set like a little pearl in an emerald band. Behind it, and seeming almost to topple, imminent, above it, rose the sea-following range of the Cordilleras. In front the sea was spread, a smiling jailer, but even more incorruptible than the frowning mountains. The waves swished along the smooth beach; the parrots screamed in the orange and ceiba-trees; the palms waved their limber fronds foolishly like an awkward chorus at the prima donna’s cue to enter.</p>
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<p>Coralio reclined, in the midday heat, like some vacuous beauty lounging in a guarded harem. The town lay at the sea’s edge on a strip of alluvial coast. It was set like a little pearl in an emerald band. Behind it, and seeming almost to topple, imminent, above it, rose the sea-following range of the Cordilleras. In front the sea was spread, a smiling jailer, but even more incorruptible than the frowning mountains. The waves swished along the smooth beach; the parrots screamed in the orange and ceiba-trees; the palms waved their limber fronds foolishly like an awkward chorus at the prima donna’s cue to enter.</p>
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<p>Suddenly the town was full of excitement. A native boy dashed down a grass-grown street, shrieking: “<i>Busca el Señor Goodwin. Ha venido un telégrafo por el!</i>”</p>
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<p>The word passed quickly. Telegrams do not often come to anyone in Coralio. The cry for Señor Goodwin was taken up by a dozen officious voices. The main street running parallel to the beach became populated with those who desired to expedite the delivery of the despatch. Knots of women with complexions varying from palest olive to deepest brown gathered at street corners and plaintively carolled: “<i>Un telégrafo por Señor Goodwin!</i>” The <i>comandante</i>, Don Señor el Coronel Encarnación Rios, who was loyal to the Ins and suspected Goodwin’s devotion to the Outs, hissed: “Aha!” and wrote in his secret memorandum book the accusive fact that Señor Goodwin had on that momentous date received a telegram.</p>
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<p>In the midst of the hullabaloo a man stepped to the door of a small wooden building and looked out. Above the door was a sign that read “Keogh and Clancy”—a nomenclature that seemed not to be indigenous to that tropical soil. The man in the door was Billy Keogh, scout of fortune and progress and latter-day rover of the Spanish Main. Tintypes and photographs were the weapons with which Keogh and Clancy were at that time assailing the hopeless shores. Outside the shop were set two large frames filled with specimens of their art and skill.</p>
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<p>Goodwin had strolled up the street and met the boy with the message. The ox-eyed women gazed at him with shy admiration, for his type drew them. He was big, blonde, and jauntily dressed in white linen, with buckskin <i>zapatos</i>. His manner was courtly, with a sort of kindly truculence in it, tempered by a merciful eye. When the telegram had been delivered, and the bearer of it dismissed with a gratuity, the relieved populace returned to the contiguities of shade from which curiosity had drawn it—the women to their baking in the mud ovens under the orange-trees, or to the interminable combing of their long, straight hair; the men to their cigarettes and gossip in the cantinas.</p>
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<p>Goodwin sat on Keogh’s doorstep, and read his telegram. It was from Bob Englehart, an American, who lived in San Mateo, the capital city of Anchuria, eighty miles in the interior. Englehart was a gold miner, an ardent revolutionist and “good people.” That he was a man of resource and imagination was proven by the telegram he had sent. It had been his task to send a confidential message to his friend in Coralio. This could not have been accomplished in either Spanish or English, for the eye politic in Anchuria was an active one. The Ins and the Outs were perpetually on their guard. But Englehart was a diplomatist. There existed but one code upon which he might make requisition with promise of safety—the great and potent code of Slang. So, here is the message that slipped, unconstrued, through the fingers of curious officials, and came to the eye of Goodwin:<br/></p>
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<blockquote>
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<p>His Nibs skedaddled yesterday per jack-rabbit line with all the coin in the kitty and the bundle of muslin he’s spoony about. The boodle is six figures short. Our crowd in good shape, but we need the spondulicks. You collar it. The main guy and the dry goods are headed for the briny. You know what to do.</p>
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<p>His Nibs skedaddled yesterday per jackrabbit line with all the coin in the kitty and the bundle of muslin he’s spoony about. The boodle is six figures short. Our crowd in good shape, but we need the spondulicks. You collar it. The main guy and the dry goods are headed for the briny. You know what to do.</p>
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<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Bob</span>.<br/></p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>This screed, remarkable as it was, had no mystery for Goodwin. He was the most successful of the small advance-guard of speculative Americans that had invaded Anchuria, and he had not reached that enviable pinnacle without having well exercised the arts of foresight and deduction. He had taken up political intrigue as a matter of business. He was acute enough to wield a certain influence among the leading schemers, and he was prosperous enough to be able to purchase the respect of the petty office-holders. There was always a revolutionary party; and to it he had always allied himself; for the adherents of a new administration received the rewards of their labours. There was now a Liberal party seeking to overturn President Miraflores. If the wheel successfully revolved, Goodwin stood to win a concession to 30,000 manzanas of the finest coffee lands in the interior. Certain incidents in the recent career of President Miraflores had excited a shrewd suspicion in Goodwin’s mind that the government was near a dissolution from another cause than that of a revolution, and now Englehart’s telegram had come as a corroboration of his wisdom.</p>
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<p>The telegram, which had remained unintelligible to the Anchurian linguists who had applied to it in vain their knowledge of Spanish and elemental English, conveyed a stimulating piece of news to Goodwin’s understanding. It informed him that the president of the republic had decamped from the capital city with the contents of the treasury. Furthermore, that he was accompanied in his flight by that winning adventuress Isabel Guilbert, the opera singer, whose troupe of performers had been entertained by the president at San Mateo during the past month on a scale less modest than that with which royal visitors are often content. The reference to the “jack-rabbit line” could mean nothing else than the mule-back system of transport that prevailed between Coralio and the capital. The hint that the “boodle” was “six figures short” made the condition of the national treasury lamentably clear. Also it was convincingly true that the ingoing party—its way now made a pacific one—would need the “spondulicks.” Unless its pledges should be fulfilled, and the spoils held for the delectation of the victors, precarious indeed, would be the position of the new government. Therefore it was exceeding necessary to “collar the main guy,” and recapture the sinews of war and government.</p>
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<p>This screed, remarkable as it was, had no mystery for Goodwin. He was the most successful of the small advance-guard of speculative Americans that had invaded Anchuria, and he had not reached that enviable pinnacle without having well exercised the arts of foresight and deduction. He had taken up political intrigue as a matter of business. He was acute enough to wield a certain influence among the leading schemers, and he was prosperous enough to be able to purchase the respect of the petty officeholders. There was always a revolutionary party; and to it he had always allied himself; for the adherents of a new administration received the rewards of their labours. There was now a Liberal party seeking to overturn President Miraflores. If the wheel successfully revolved, Goodwin stood to win a concession to 30,000 manzanas of the finest coffee lands in the interior. Certain incidents in the recent career of President Miraflores had excited a shrewd suspicion in Goodwin’s mind that the government was near a dissolution from another cause than that of a revolution, and now Englehart’s telegram had come as a corroboration of his wisdom.</p>
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<p>The telegram, which had remained unintelligible to the Anchurian linguists who had applied to it in vain their knowledge of Spanish and elemental English, conveyed a stimulating piece of news to Goodwin’s understanding. It informed him that the president of the republic had decamped from the capital city with the contents of the treasury. Furthermore, that he was accompanied in his flight by that winning adventuress Isabel Guilbert, the opera singer, whose troupe of performers had been entertained by the president at San Mateo during the past month on a scale less modest than that with which royal visitors are often content. The reference to the “jackrabbit line” could mean nothing else than the mule-back system of transport that prevailed between Coralio and the capital. The hint that the “boodle” was “six figures short” made the condition of the national treasury lamentably clear. Also it was convincingly true that the ingoing party—its way now made a pacific one—would need the “spondulicks.” Unless its pledges should be fulfilled, and the spoils held for the delectation of the victors, precarious indeed, would be the position of the new government. Therefore it was exceeding necessary to “collar the main guy,” and recapture the sinews of war and government.</p>
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<p>Goodwin handed the message to Keogh.</p>
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<p>“Read that, Billy,” he said. “It’s from Bob Englehart. Can you manage the cipher?”</p>
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<p>Keogh sat in the other half of the doorway, and carefully perused the telegram.</p>
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<p>“ ’Tis not a cipher,” he said, finally. “ ’Tis what they call literature, and that’s a system of language put in the mouths of people that they’ve never been introduced to by writers of imagination. The magazines invented it, but I never knew before that President Norvin Green had stamped it with the seal of his approval. ’Tis now no longer literature, but language. The dictionaries tried, but they couldn’t make it go for anything but dialect. Sure, now that the Western Union indorses it, it won’t be long till a race of people will spring up that speaks it.”</p>
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<p>“ ’Tis not a cipher,” he said, finally. “ ’Tis what they call literature, and that’s a system of language put in the mouths of people that they’ve never been introduced to by writers of imagination. The magazines invented it, but I never knew before that President Norvin Green had stamped it with the seal of his approval. ’Tis now no longer literature, but language. The dictionaries tried, but they couldn’t make it go for anything but dialect. Sure, now that the Western Union endorses it, it won’t be long till a race of people will spring up that speaks it.”</p>
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<p>“You’re running too much to philology, Billy,” said Goodwin. “Do you make out the meaning of it?”</p>
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<p>“Sure,” replied the philosopher of Fortune. “All languages come easy to the man who must know ’em. I’ve even failed to misunderstand an order to evacuate in classical Chinese when it was backed up by the muzzle of a breech-loader. This little literary essay I hold in my hands means a game of Fox-in-the-Morning. Ever play that, Frank, when you was a kid?”</p>
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<p>“Sure,” replied the philosopher of Fortune. “All languages come easy to the man who must know ’em. I’ve even failed to misunderstand an order to evacuate in classical Chinese when it was backed up by the muzzle of a breechloader. This little literary essay I hold in my hands means a game of Fox-in-the-Morning. Ever play that, Frank, when you was a kid?”</p>
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<p>“I think so,” said Goodwin, laughing. “You join hands all ’round, <span class="nowrap">and—”</span></p>
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<p>“You do not,” interrupted Keogh. “You’ve got a fine sporting game mixed up in your head with ‘All Around the Rosebush.’ The spirit of ‘Fox-in-the-Morning’ is opposed to the holding of hands. I’ll tell you how it’s played. This president man and his companion in play, they stand up over in San Mateo, ready for the run, and shout: ‘Fox-in-the-Morning!’ Me and you, standing here, we say: ‘Goose and the Gander!’ They say: ‘How many miles is it to London town?’ We say: ‘Only a few, if your legs are long enough. How many comes out?’ They say: ‘More than you’re able to catch.’ And then the game commences.”</p>
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<p>“I catch the idea,” said Goodwin. “It won’t do to let the goose and gander slip through our fingers, Billy; their feathers are too valuable. Our crowd is prepared and able to step into the shoes of the government at once; but with the treasury empty we’d stay in power about as long as a tenderfoot would stick on an untamed bronco. We must play the fox on every foot of the coast to prevent their getting out of the country.”</p>
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<p>“What’s the trouble, Billy?” asked Goodwin, pausing. “That’s the first time I ever heard you sigh.”</p>
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<p>“ ’Tis the last,” said Keogh. “With that sorrowful puff of wind I resign myself to a life of praiseworthy but harassing honesty. What are tintypes, if you please, to the opportunities of the great and hilarious class of ganders and geese? Not that I would be a president, Frank—and the boodle he’s got is too big for me to handle—but in some ways I feel my conscience hurting me for addicting myself to photographing a nation instead of running away with it. Frank, did you ever see the ‘bundle of muslin’ that His Excellency has wrapped up and carried off?”</p>
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<p>“Isabel Guilbert?” said Goodwin, laughing. “No, I never did. From what I’ve heard of her, though, I imagine that she wouldn’t stick at anything to carry her point. Don’t get romantic, Billy. Sometimes I begin to fear that there’s Irish blood in your ancestry.”</p>
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<p>“I never saw her either,” went on Keogh; “but they say she’s got all the ladies of mythology, sculpture, and fiction reduced to chromos. They say she can look at a man once, and he’ll turn monkey and climb trees to pick cocoanuts for her. Think of that president man with Lord knows how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in one hand, and this muslin siren in the other, galloping down hill on a sympathetic mule amid songbirds and flowers! And here is Billy Keogh, because he is virtuous, condemned to the unprofitable swindle of slandering the faces of missing links on tin for an honest living! ’Tis an injustice of nature.”</p>
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<p>“I never saw her either,” went on Keogh; “but they say she’s got all the ladies of mythology, sculpture, and fiction reduced to chromos. They say she can look at a man once, and he’ll turn monkey and climb trees to pick coconuts for her. Think of that president man with Lord knows how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in one hand, and this muslin siren in the other, galloping down hill on a sympathetic mule amid songbirds and flowers! And here is Billy Keogh, because he is virtuous, condemned to the unprofitable swindle of slandering the faces of missing links on tin for an honest living! ’Tis an injustice of nature.”</p>
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<p>“Cheer up,” said Goodwin. “You are a pretty poor fox to be envying a gander. Maybe the enchanting Guilbert will take a fancy to you and your tintypes after we impoverish her royal escort.”</p>
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<p>“She could do worse,” reflected Keogh; “but she won’t. ’Tis not a tintype gallery, but the gallery of the gods that she’s fitted to adorn. She’s a very wicked lady, and the president man is in luck. But I hear Clancy swearing in the back room for having to do all the work.” And Keogh plunged for the rear of the “gallery,” whistling gaily in a spontaneous way that belied his recent sigh over the questionable good luck of the flying president.</p>
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<p>Goodwin turned from the main street into a much narrower one that intersected it at a right angle.</p>
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<section id="chapter-10" epub:type="chapter">
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<h2>X</h2>
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<h3>THE SHAMROCK AND THE PALM<br/> </h3>
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<p>One night when there was no breeze, and Coralio seemed closer than ever to the gratings of Avernus, five men were grouped about the door of the photograph establishment of Keogh and Clancy. Thus, in all the scorched and exotic places of the earth, Caucasians meet when the day’s work is done to preserve the fulness of their heritage by the aspersion of alien things.</p>
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<p>One night when there was no breeze, and Coralio seemed closer than ever to the gratings of Avernus, five men were grouped about the door of the photograph establishment of Keogh and Clancy. Thus, in all the scorched and exotic places of the earth, Caucasians meet when the day’s work is done to preserve the fullness of their heritage by the aspersion of alien things.</p>
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<p>Johnny Atwood lay stretched upon the grass in the undress uniform of a Carib, and prated feebly of cool water to be had in the cucumber-wood pumps of Dalesburg. <abbr>Dr.</abbr> Gregg, through the prestige of his whiskers and as a bribe against the relation of his imminent professional tales, was conceded the hammock that was swung between the door jamb and a calabash-tree. Keogh had moved out upon the grass a little table that held the instrument for burnishing completed photographs. He was the only busy one of the group. Industriously from between the cylinders of the burnisher rolled the finished depictments of Coralio’s citizens. Blanchard, the French mining engineer, in his cool linen viewed the smoke of his cigarette through his calm glasses, impervious to the heat. Clancy sat on the steps, smoking his short pipe. His mood was the gossip’s; the others were reduced, by the humidity, to the state of disability desirable in an audience.</p>
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<p>Clancy was an American with an Irish diathesis and cosmopolitan proclivities. Many businesses had claimed him, but not for long. The roadster’s blood was in his veins. The voice of the tintype was but one of the many callings that had wooed him upon so many roads. Sometimes he could be persuaded to oral construction of his voyages into the informal and egregious. To-night there were symptoms of divulgement in him.</p>
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<p>Clancy was an American with an Irish diathesis and cosmopolitan proclivities. Many businesses had claimed him, but not for long. The roadster’s blood was in his veins. The voice of the tintype was but one of the many callings that had wooed him upon so many roads. Sometimes he could be persuaded to oral construction of his voyages into the informal and egregious. Tonight there were symptoms of divulgement in him.</p>
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<p>“ ’Tis elegant weather for filibusterin’,” he volunteered. “It reminds me of the time I struggled to liberate a nation from the poisonous breath of a tyrant’s clutch. ’Twas hard work. ’Tis strainin’ to the back and makes corns on the hands.”</p>
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<p>“I didn’t know you had ever lent your sword to an oppressed people,” murmured Atwood, from the grass.</p>
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<p>“I did,” said Clancy; “and they turned it into a ploughshare.”</p>
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<p>“Bein’ a Clancy, in two minutes me and the foreigner man were seated at a table in the cabin of the steamer, with a bottle between us. I could hear the heavy boxes bein’ dumped into the hold. I judged that cargo must consist of at least 2,000 Winchesters. Me and the brown man drank the bottle of stuff, and he called the steward to bring another. When you amalgamate a Clancy with the contents of a bottle you practically instigate secession. I had heard a good deal about these revolutions in them tropical localities, and I begun to want a hand in it.</p>
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<p>“ ‘You goin’ to stir things up in your country, ain’t you, monseer?’ says I, with a wink to let him know I was on.</p>
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<p>“ ‘Yes, yes,’ said the little man, pounding his fist on the table. ‘A change of the greatest will occur. Too long have the people been oppressed with the promises and the never-to-happen things to become. The great work it shall be carry on. Yes. Our forces shall in the capital city strike of the soonest. <i>Carrambos!</i>’</p>
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<p>“ ’<i>Carrambos</i> is the word,’ says I, beginning to invest myself with enthusiasm and more wine, ‘likewise veeva, as I said before. May the shamrock of old—I mean the banana-vine or the pie-plant, or whatever the imperial emblem may be of your down-trodden country, wave forever.’</p>
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<p>“ ’<i>Carrambos</i> is the word,’ says I, beginning to invest myself with enthusiasm and more wine, ‘likewise veeva, as I said before. May the shamrock of old—I mean the banana-vine or the pieplant, or whatever the imperial emblem may be of your downtrodden country, wave forever.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘A thousand thank-yous,’ says the round man, ‘for your emission of amicable utterances. What our cause needs of the very most is mans who will the work do, to lift it along. Oh, for one thousands strong, good mans to aid the General De Vega that he shall to his country bring those success and glory! It is hard—oh, so hard to find good mans to help in the work.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Monseer,’ says I, leanin’ over the table and graspin’ his hand, ‘I don’t know where your country is, but me heart bleeds for it. The heart of a Clancy was never deaf to the sight of an oppressed people. The family is filibusterers by birth, and foreigners by trade. If you can use James Clancy’s arms and his blood in denudin’ your shores of the tyrant’s yoke they’re yours to command.’</p>
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<p>“General De Vega was overcome with joy to confiscate my condolence of his conspiracies and predicaments. He tried to embrace me across the table, but his fatness, and the wine that had been in the bottles, prevented. Thus was I welcomed into the ranks of filibustery. Then the general man told me his country had the name of Guatemala, and was the greatest nation laved by any ocean whatever anywhere. He looked at me with tears in his eyes, and from time to time he would emit the remark, ‘Ah! big, strong, brave mans! That is what my country need.’</p>
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<p>“General De Vega, as was the name by which he denounced himself, brought out a document for me to sign, which I did, makin’ a fine flourish and curlycue with the tail of the ‘y.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Your passage-money,’ says the general, business-like, ‘shall from your pay be deduct.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Your passage-money,’ says the general, businesslike, ‘shall from your pay be deduct.’</p>
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<p>“ ’Twill not,’ says I, haughty. ‘I’ll pay my own passage.’ A hundred and eighty dollars I had in my inside pocket, and ’twas no common filibuster I was goin’ to be, filibusterin’ for me board and clothes.</p>
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<p>“The steamer was to sail in two hours, and I went ashore to get some things together I’d need. When I came aboard I showed the general with pride the outfit. ’Twas a fine Chinchilla overcoat, Arctic overshoes, fur cap and earmuffs, with elegant fleece-lined gloves and woolen muffler.</p>
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<p>“ ’<i>Carrambos!</i>‘ says the little general. ‘What clothes are these that shall go to the tropic?’ And then the little spalpeen laughs, and he calls the captain, and the captain calls the purser, and they pipe up the chief engineer, and the whole gang leans against the cabin and laughs at Clancy’s wardrobe for Guatemala.</p>
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<p>“I paid my passage—twenty-four dollars, first cabin—and ate at table with the officer crowd. Down on the lower deck was a gang of second-class passengers, about forty of them, seemin’ to be Dagoes and the like. I wondered what so many of them were goin’ along for.</p>
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<p>“Well, then, in three days we sailed alongside that Guatemala. ’Twas a blue country, and not yellow as ’tis miscolored on the map. We landed at a town on the coast, where a train of cars was waitin’ for us on a dinky little railroad. The boxes on the steamer were brought ashore and loaded on the cars. The gang of Dagoes got aboard, too, the general and me in the front car. Yes, me and General De Vega headed the revolution, as it pulled out of the seaport town. That train travelled about as fast as a policeman goin’ to a riot. It penetrated the most conspicuous lot of fuzzy scenery ever seen outside a geography. We run some forty miles in seven hours, and the train stopped. There was no more railroad. ’Twas a sort of camp in a damp gorge full of wildness and melancholies. They was gradin’ and choppin’ out the forests ahead to continue the road. ‘Here,’ says I to myself, ‘is the romantic haunt of the revolutionists. Here will Clancy, by the virtue that is in a superior race and the inculcation of Fenian tactics, strike a tremendous blow for liberty.’</p>
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<p>“They unloaded the boxes from the train and begun to knock the tops off. From the first one that was open I saw General De Vega take the Winchester rifles and pass them around to a squad of morbid soldiery. The other boxes was opened next, and, believe me or not, divil another gun was to be seen. Every other box in the load was full of pickaxes and spades.</p>
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<p>“And then—sorrow be upon them tropics—the proud Clancy and the dishonoured Dagoes, each one of them, had to shoulder a pick or a spade, and march away to work on that dirty little railroad. Yes; ’twas that the Dagoes shipped for, and ’twas that the filibusterin’ Clancy signed for, though unbeknownst to himself at the time. In after days I found out about it. It seems ’twas hard to get hands to work on that road. The intelligent natives of the country was too lazy to work. Indeed, the saints know, ’twas unnecessary. By stretchin’ out one hand, they could seize the most delicate and costly fruits of the earth, and, by stretchin’ out the other, they could sleep for days at a time without hearin’ a seven-o’clock whistle or the footsteps of the rent man upon the stairs. So, regular, the steamers travelled to the United States to seduce labour. Usually the imported spade-slingers died in two or three months from eatin’ the over-ripe water and breathin’ the violent tropical scenery. Wherefore they made them sign contracts for a year, when they hired them, and put an armed guard over the poor divils to keep them from runnin’ away.</p>
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<p>“And then—sorrow be upon them tropics—the proud Clancy and the dishonoured Dagoes, each one of them, had to shoulder a pick or a spade, and march away to work on that dirty little railroad. Yes; ’twas that the Dagoes shipped for, and ’twas that the filibusterin’ Clancy signed for, though unbeknownst to himself at the time. In after days I found out about it. It seems ’twas hard to get hands to work on that road. The intelligent natives of the country was too lazy to work. Indeed, the saints know, ’twas unnecessary. By stretchin’ out one hand, they could seize the most delicate and costly fruits of the earth, and, by stretchin’ out the other, they could sleep for days at a time without hearin’ a seven-o’clock whistle or the footsteps of the rent man upon the stairs. So, regular, the steamers travelled to the United States to seduce labour. Usually the imported spade-slingers died in two or three months from eatin’ the overripe water and breathin’ the violent tropical scenery. Wherefore they made them sign contracts for a year, when they hired them, and put an armed guard over the poor divils to keep them from runnin’ away.</p>
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<p>“ ’Twas thus I was double-crossed by the tropics through a family failin’ of goin’ out of the way to hunt disturbances.</p>
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<p>“They gave me a pick, and I took it, meditatin’ an insurrection on the spot; but there was the guards handlin’ the Winchesters careless, and I come to the conclusion that discretion was the best part of filibusterin’. There was about a hundred of us in the gang startin’ out to work, and the word was given to move. I steps out of the ranks and goes up to that General De Vega man, who was smokin’ a cigar and gazin’ upon the scene with satisfactions and glory. He smiles at me polite and devilish. ‘Plenty work,’ says he, ‘for big, strong mans in Guatemala. Yes. T’irty dollars in the month. Good pay. Ah, yes. You strong, brave man. Bimeby we push those railroad in the capital very quick. They want you go work now. <i>Adios</i>, strong mans.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Monseer,’ says I, lingerin’, ‘will you tell a poor little Irishman this: When I set foot on your cockroachy steamer, and breathed liberal and revolutionary sentiments into your sour wine, did you think I was conspirin’ to sling a pick on your contemptuous little railroad? And when you answered me with patriotic recitations, humping up the star-spangled cause of liberty, did you have meditations of reducin’ me to the ranks of the stump-grubbin’ Dagoes in the chain-gangs of your vile and grovelin’ country?’</p>
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||||
@ -50,7 +50,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘There is not war in Guatemala. But work? Yes. Good. T’irty dollar in the month. You shall shoulder one pickaxe, señor, and dig for the liberty and prosperity of Guatemala. Off to your work. The guard waits for you.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Little, fat, poodle dog of a brown man,’ says I, quiet, but full of indignations and discomforts, ‘things shall happen to you. Maybe not right away, but as soon as J. Clancy can formulate somethin’ in the way of repartee.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“The boss of the gang orders us to work. I tramps off with the Dagoes, and I hears the distinguished patriot and kidnapper laughin’ hearty as we go.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ’Tis a sorrowful fact, for eight weeks I built railroads for that misbehavin’ country. I filibustered twelve hours a day with a heavy pick and a spade, choppin’ away the luxurious landscape that grew upon the right of way. We worked in swamps that smelled like there was a leak in the gas mains, trampin’ down a fine assortment of the most expensive hothouse plants and vegetables. The scene was tropical beyond the wildest imagination of the geography man. The trees was all sky-scrapers; the underbrush was full of needles and pins; there was monkeys jumpin’ around and crocodiles and pink-tailed mockin’-birds, and ye stood knee-deep in the rotten water and grabbled roots for the liberation of Guatemala. Of nights we would build smudges in camp to discourage the mosquitoes, and sit in the smoke, with the guards pacin’ all around us. There was two hundred men workin’ on the road—mostly Dagoes, nigger-men, Spanish-men and Swedes. Three or four were Irish.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ’Tis a sorrowful fact, for eight weeks I built railroads for that misbehavin’ country. I filibustered twelve hours a day with a heavy pick and a spade, choppin’ away the luxurious landscape that grew upon the right of way. We worked in swamps that smelled like there was a leak in the gas mains, trampin’ down a fine assortment of the most expensive hothouse plants and vegetables. The scene was tropical beyond the wildest imagination of the geography man. The trees was all skyscrapers; the underbrush was full of needles and pins; there was monkeys jumpin’ around and crocodiles and pink-tailed mockin’-birds, and ye stood knee-deep in the rotten water and grabbled roots for the liberation of Guatemala. Of nights we would build smudges in camp to discourage the mosquitoes, and sit in the smoke, with the guards pacin’ all around us. There was two hundred men workin’ on the road—mostly Dagoes, nigger-men, Spanish-men and Swedes. Three or four were Irish.</p>
|
||||
<p>“One old man named Halloran—a man of Hibernian entitlements and discretions, explained it to me. He had been workin’ on the road a year. Most of them died in less than six months. He was dried up to gristle and bone, and shook with chills every third night.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘When you first come,’ says he, ‘ye think ye’ll leave right away. But they hold out your first month’s pay for your passage over, and by that time the tropics has its grip on ye. Ye’re surrounded by a ragin’ forest full of disreputable beasts—lions and baboons and anacondas—waitin’ to devour ye. The sun strikes ye hard, and melts the marrow in your bones. Ye get similar to the lettuce-eaters the poetry-book speaks about. Ye forget the elevated sintiments of life, such as patriotism, revenge, disturbances of the peace and the dacint love of a clane shirt. Ye do your work, and ye swallow the kerosene ile and rubber pipestems dished up to ye by the Dago cook for food. Ye light your pipeful, and say to yoursilf, “Nixt week I’ll break away,” and ye go to sleep and call yersilf a liar, for ye know ye’ll never do it.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Who is this general man,’ asks I, ‘that calls himself De Vega?’</p>
|
||||
@ -58,10 +58,10 @@
|
||||
<p>“”Tis not my way,’ says I, ‘to make threats against any man, but there’s an account to be settled between the railroad man and James O’Dowd Clancy.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“”Twas that way I thought, mesilf, at first,’ Halloran says, with a big sigh, ‘until I got to be a lettuce-eater. The fault’s wid these tropics. They rejuices a man’s system. ’Tis a land, as the poet says, “Where it always seems to be after dinner.” I does me work and smokes me pipe and sleeps. There’s little else in life, anyway. Ye’ll get that way yersilf, mighty soon. Don’t be harbourin’ any sintiments at all, Clancy.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I can’t help it,’ says I; ‘I’m full of ’em. I enlisted in the revolutionary army of this dark country in good faith to fight for its liberty, honours and silver candlesticks; instead of which I am set to amputatin’ its scenery and grubbin’ its roots. ’Tis the general man will have to pay for it.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Two months I worked on that railroad before I found a chance to get away. One day a gang of us was sent back to the end of the completed line to fetch some picks that had been sent down to Port Barrios to be sharpened. They were brought on a hand-car, and I noticed, when I started away, that the car was left there on the track.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Two months I worked on that railroad before I found a chance to get away. One day a gang of us was sent back to the end of the completed line to fetch some picks that had been sent down to Port Barrios to be sharpened. They were brought on a handcar, and I noticed, when I started away, that the car was left there on the track.</p>
|
||||
<p>“That night, about twelve, I woke up Halloran and told him my scheme.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Run away?’ says Halloran. ‘Good Lord, Clancy, do ye mean it? Why, I ain’t got the nerve. It’s too chilly, and I ain’t slept enough. Run away? I told you, Clancy, I’ve eat the lettuce. I’ve lost my grip. ’Tis the tropics that’s done it. ’Tis like the poet says: “Forgotten are our friends that we have left behind; in the hollow lettuce-land we will live and lay reclined.” You better go on, Clancy. I’ll stay, I guess. It’s too early and cold, and I’m sleepy.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“So I had to leave Halloran. I dressed quiet, and slipped out of the tent we were in. When the guard came along I knocked him over, like a ninepin, with a green cocoanut I had, and made for the railroad. I got on that hand-car and made it fly. ’Twas yet a while before daybreak when I saw the lights of Port Barrios about a mile away. I stopped the hand-car there and walked to the town. I stepped inside the corporations of that town with care and hesitations. I was not afraid of the army of Guatemala, but me soul quaked at the prospect of a hand-to-hand struggle with its employment bureau. ’Tis a country that hires its help easy and keeps ’em long. Sure I can fancy Missis America and Missis Guatemala passin’ a bit of gossip some fine, still night across the mountains. ‘Oh, dear,’ says Missis America, ‘and it’s a lot of trouble I’m havin’ ag’in with the help, señora, ma’am.’ ‘Laws, now!’ says Missis Guatemala, ‘you don’t say so, ma’am! Now, mine never think of leavin’ me—te-he! ma’am,’ snickers Missis Guatemala.</p>
|
||||
<p>“So I had to leave Halloran. I dressed quiet, and slipped out of the tent we were in. When the guard came along I knocked him over, like a ninepin, with a green coconut I had, and made for the railroad. I got on that handcar and made it fly. ’Twas yet a while before daybreak when I saw the lights of Port Barrios about a mile away. I stopped the handcar there and walked to the town. I stepped inside the corporations of that town with care and hesitations. I was not afraid of the army of Guatemala, but me soul quaked at the prospect of a hand-to-hand struggle with its employment bureau. ’Tis a country that hires its help easy and keeps ’em long. Sure I can fancy Missis America and Missis Guatemala passin’ a bit of gossip some fine, still night across the mountains. ‘Oh, dear,’ says Missis America, ‘and it’s a lot of trouble I’m havin’ ag’in with the help, señora, ma’am.’ ‘Laws, now!’ says Missis Guatemala, ‘you don’t say so, ma’am! Now, mine never think of leavin’ me—te-he! ma’am,’ snickers Missis Guatemala.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I was wonderin’ how I was goin’ to move away from them tropics without bein’ hired again. Dark as it was, I could see a steamer ridin’ in the harbour, with smoke emergin’ from her stacks. I turned down a little grass street that run down to the water. On the beach I found a little brown nigger-man just about to shove off in a skiff.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Hold on, Sambo,’ says I, ‘savve English?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Heap plenty, yes,’ says he, with a pleasant grin.</p>
|
||||
@ -73,7 +73,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ’<i>Cinco pesos</i>,’ repeats the little man. ‘Five dollee, you give?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ’Twas not such a bad little man. He had hesitations at first, sayin’ that passengers leavin’ the country had to have papers and passports, but at last he took me out alongside the steamer.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Day was just breakin’ as we struck her, and there wasn’t a soul to be seen on board. The water was very still, and the nigger-man gave me a lift from the boat, and I climbed onto the steamer where her side was sliced to the deck for loadin’ fruit. The hatches was open, and I looked down and saw the cargo of bananas that filled the hold to within six feet of the top. I thinks to myself, ‘Clancy, you better go as a stowaway. It’s safer. The steamer men might hand you back to the employment bureau. The tropic’ll get you, Clancy, if you don’t watch out.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“So I jumps down easy among the bananas, and digs out a hole to hide in among the bunches. In an hour or so I could hear the engines goin’, and feel the steamer rockin’, and I knew we were off to sea. They left the hatches open for ventilation, and pretty soon it was light enough in the hold to see fairly well. I got to feelin’ a bit hungry, and thought I’d have a light fruit lunch, by way of refreshment. I creeped out of the hole I’d made and stood up straight. Just then I saw another man crawl up about ten feet away and reach out and skin a banana and stuff it into his mouth. ’Twas a dirty man, black-faced and ragged and disgraceful of aspect. Yes, the man was a ringer for the pictures of the fat Weary Willie in the funny papers. I looked again, and saw it was my general man—De Vega, the great revolutionist, mule-rider and pickaxe importer. When he saw me the general hesitated with his mouth filled with banana and his eyes the size of cocoanuts.</p>
|
||||
<p>“So I jumps down easy among the bananas, and digs out a hole to hide in among the bunches. In an hour or so I could hear the engines goin’, and feel the steamer rockin’, and I knew we were off to sea. They left the hatches open for ventilation, and pretty soon it was light enough in the hold to see fairly well. I got to feelin’ a bit hungry, and thought I’d have a light fruit lunch, by way of refreshment. I creeped out of the hole I’d made and stood up straight. Just then I saw another man crawl up about ten feet away and reach out and skin a banana and stuff it into his mouth. ’Twas a dirty man, black-faced and ragged and disgraceful of aspect. Yes, the man was a ringer for the pictures of the fat Weary Willie in the funny papers. I looked again, and saw it was my general man—De Vega, the great revolutionist, mule-rider and pickaxe importer. When he saw me the general hesitated with his mouth filled with banana and his eyes the size of coconuts.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Hist!’ I says. ‘Not a word, or they’ll put us off and make us walk. “Veev la Liberty!” ’ I adds, copperin’ the sentiment by shovin’ a banana into the source of it. I was certain the general wouldn’t recognize me. The nefarious work of the tropics had left me lookin’ different. There was half an inch of roan whiskers coverin’ me face, and me costume was a pair of blue overalls and a red shirt.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘How you come in the ship, señor?’ asked the general as soon as he could speak.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘By the back door—whist!’ says I. ”Twas a glorious blow for liberty we struck,’ I continues; ‘but we was overpowered by numbers. Let us accept our defeat like brave men and eat another banana.’</p>
|
||||
@ -99,7 +99,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Railroader,’ says I again. ‘On the hog. No good. Been livin’ for three days on stolen bananas. Look at him. Ain’t that enough?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Twenty-five dollars or sixty days, was what the recorder gave the general. He didn’t have a cent, so he took the time. They let me go, as I knew they would, for I had money to show, and O’Hara spoke for me. Yes; sixty days he got. ’Twas just so long that I slung a pick for the great country of Kam—Guatemala.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Clancy paused. The bright starlight showed a reminiscent look of happy content on his seasoned features. Keogh leaned in his chair and gave his partner a slap on his thinly-clad back that sounded like the crack of the surf on the sands.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Tell ’em, ye divil,” he chuckled, “how you got even with the tropical general in the way of agricultural manœuvrings.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Tell ’em, ye divil,” he chuckled, “how you got even with the tropical general in the way of agricultural maneuverings.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Havin’ no money,” concluded Clancy, with unction, “they set him to work his fine out with a gang from the parish prison clearing Ursulines Street. Around the corner was a saloon decorated genially with electric fans and cool merchandise. I made that me headquarters, and every fifteen minutes I’d walk around and take a look at the little man filibusterin’ with a rake and shovel. ’Twas just such a hot broth of a day as this has been. And I’d call at him ‘Hey, monseer!’ and he’d look at me black, with the damp showin’ through his shirt in places.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Fat, strong mans,’ says I to General De Vega, ‘is needed in New Orleans. Yes. To carry on the good work. Carrambos! Erin go bragh!’ ”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
|
@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
|
||||
<section id="chapter-11" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h2>XI</h2>
|
||||
<h3>THE REMNANTS OF THE CODE<br/> </h3>
|
||||
<p>Breakfast in Coralio was at eleven. Therefore the people did not go to market early. The little wooden market-house stood on a patch of short-trimmed grass, under the vivid green foliage of a bread-fruit tree.</p>
|
||||
<p>Breakfast in Coralio was at eleven. Therefore the people did not go to market early. The little wooden market-house stood on a patch of short-trimmed grass, under the vivid green foliage of a breadfruit tree.</p>
|
||||
<p>Thither one morning the venders leisurely convened, bringing their wares with them. A porch or platform six feet wide encircled the building, shaded from the mid-morning sun by the projecting, grass-thatched roof. Upon this platform the venders were wont to display their goods—newly-killed beef, fish, crabs, fruit of the country, cassava, eggs, <i>dulces</i> and high, tottering stacks of native tortillas as large around as the sombrero of a Spanish grandee.</p>
|
||||
<p>But on this morning they whose stations lay on the seaward side of the market-house, instead of spreading their merchandise formed themselves into a softly jabbering and gesticulating group. For there upon their space of the platform was sprawled, asleep, the unbeautiful figure of “Beelzebub” Blythe. He lay upon a ragged strip of cocoa matting, more than ever a fallen angel in appearance. His suit of coarse flax, soiled, bursting at the seams, crumpled into a thousand diversified wrinkles and creases, inclosed him absurdly, like the garb of some effigy that had been stuffed in sport and thrown there after indignity had been wrought upon it. But firmly upon the high bridge of his nose reposed his gold-rimmed glasses, the surviving badge of his ancient glory.</p>
|
||||
<p>The sun’s rays, reflecting quiveringly from the rippling sea upon his face, and the voices of the market-men woke “Beelzebub” Blythe. He sat up, blinking, and leaned his back against the wall of the market. Drawing a blighted silk handkerchief from his pocket, he assiduously rubbed and burnished his glasses. And while doing this he became aware that his bedroom had been invaded, and that polite brown and yellow men were beseeching him to vacate in favour of their market stuff.</p>
|
||||
@ -26,7 +26,7 @@
|
||||
<p>At the little fountain in the <i>plaza</i> he made an apology for a toilet with his wetted handkerchief. Across the open square filed the dolorous line of friends of the prisoners in the <i>calaboza</i>, bearing the morning meal of the immured. The food in their hands aroused small longing in Blythe. It was drink that his soul craved, or money to buy it.</p>
|
||||
<p>In the streets he met many with whom he had been friends and equals, and whose patience and liberality he had gradually exhausted. Willard Geddie and Paula cantered past him with the coolest of nods, returning from their daily horseback ride along the old Indian road. Keogh passed him at another corner, whistling cheerfully and bearing a prize of newly-laid eggs for the breakfast of himself and Clancy. The jovial scout of Fortune was one of Blythe’s victims who had plunged his hand oftenest into his pocket to aid him. But now it seemed that Keogh, too, had fortified himself against further invasions. His curt greeting and the ominous light in his full, grey eye quickened the steps of “Beelzebub,” whom desperation had almost incited to attempt an additional “loan.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Three drinking shops the forlorn one next visited in succession. In all of these his money, his credit and his welcome had long since been spent; but Blythe felt that he would have fawned in the dust at the feet of an enemy that morning for one draught of <i>aguardiente</i>. In two of the <i>pulperias</i> his courageous petition for drink was met with a refusal so polite that it stung worse than abuse. The third establishment had acquired something of American methods; and here he was seized bodily and cast out upon his hands and knees.</p>
|
||||
<p>This physical indignity caused a singular change in the man. As he picked himself up and walked away, an expression of absolute relief came upon his features. The specious and conciliatory smile that had been graven there was succeeded by a look of calm and sinister resolve. “Beelzebub” had been floundering in the sea of improbity, holding by a slender life-line to the respectable world that had cast him overboard. He must have felt that with this ultimate shock the line had snapped, and have experienced the welcome ease of the drowning swimmer who has ceased to struggle.</p>
|
||||
<p>This physical indignity caused a singular change in the man. As he picked himself up and walked away, an expression of absolute relief came upon his features. The specious and conciliatory smile that had been graven there was succeeded by a look of calm and sinister resolve. “Beelzebub” had been floundering in the sea of improbity, holding by a slender lifeline to the respectable world that had cast him overboard. He must have felt that with this ultimate shock the line had snapped, and have experienced the welcome ease of the drowning swimmer who has ceased to struggle.</p>
|
||||
<p>Blythe walked to the next corner and stood there while he brushed the sand from his garments and re-polished his glasses.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ve got to do it—oh, I’ve got to do it,” he told himself, aloud. “If I had a quart of rum I believe I could stave it off yet—for a little while. But there’s no more rum for—‘Beelzebub,’ as they call me. By the flames of Tartarus! if I’m to sit at the right hand of Satan somebody has got to pay the court expenses. You’ll have to pony up, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Frank Goodwin. You’re a good fellow; but a gentleman must draw the line at being kicked into the gutter. Blackmail isn’t a pretty word, but it’s the next station on the road I’m travelling.”</p>
|
||||
<p>With purpose in his steps Blythe now moved rapidly through the town by way of its landward environs. He passed through the squalid quarters of the improvident negroes and on beyond the picturesque shacks of the poorer <i>mestizos</i>. From many points along his course he could see, through the umbrageous glades, the house of Frank Goodwin on its wooded hill. And as he crossed the little bridge over the lagoon he saw the old Indian, Galvez, scrubbing at the wooden slab that bore the name of Miraflores. Beyond the lagoon the lands of Goodwin began to slope gently upward. A grassy road, shaded by a munificent and diverse array of tropical flora wound from the edge of an outlying banana grove to the dwelling. Blythe took this road with long and purposeful strides.</p>
|
||||
@ -45,8 +45,8 @@
|
||||
<p>“Suppose you go into the details,” suggested Goodwin, calmly arranging his letters on the table.</p>
|
||||
<p>“All right,” said “Beelzebub.” “I like the way you take it. I despise histrionics; so you will please prepare yourself for the facts without any red fire, calcium or grace notes on the saxophone.</p>
|
||||
<p>“On the night that His Fly-by-night Excellency arrived in town I was very drunk. You will excuse the pride with which I state that fact; but it was quite a feat for me to attain that desirable state. Somebody had left a cot out under the orange trees in the yard of Madama Ortiz’s hotel. I stepped over the wall, laid down upon it, and fell asleep. I was awakened by an orange that dropped from the tree upon my nose; and I laid there for awhile cursing Sir Isaac Newton, or whoever it was that invented gravitation, for not confining his theory to apples.</p>
|
||||
<p>“And then along came <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Miraflores and his true-love with the treasury in a valise, and went into the hotel. Next you hove in sight, and held a pow-wow with the tonsorial artist who insisted upon talking shop after hours. I tried to slumber again; but once more my rest was disturbed—this time by the noise of the popgun that went off upstairs. Then that valise came crashing down into an orange tree just above my head; and I arose from my couch, not knowing when it might begin to rain Saratoga trunks. When the army and the constabulary began to arrive, with their medals and decorations hastily pinned to their pajamas, and their snickersnees drawn, I crawled into the welcome shadow of a banana plant. I remained there for an hour, by which time the excitement and the people had cleared away. And then, my dear Goodwin—excuse me—I saw you sneak back and pluck that ripe and juicy valise from the orange tree. I followed you, and saw you take it to your own house. A hundred-thousand-dollar crop from one orange tree in a season about breaks the record of the fruit-growing industry.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Being a gentleman at that time, of course, I never mentioned the incident to anyone. But this morning I was kicked out of a saloon, my code of honour is all out at the elbows, and I’d sell my mother’s prayer-book for three fingers of <i>aguardiente</i>. I’m not putting on the screws hard. It ought to be worth a thousand to you for me to have slept on that cot through the whole business without waking up and seeing anything.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“And then along came <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Miraflores and his truelove with the treasury in a valise, and went into the hotel. Next you hove in sight, and held a powwow with the tonsorial artist who insisted upon talking shop after hours. I tried to slumber again; but once more my rest was disturbed—this time by the noise of the popgun that went off upstairs. Then that valise came crashing down into an orange tree just above my head; and I arose from my couch, not knowing when it might begin to rain Saratoga trunks. When the army and the constabulary began to arrive, with their medals and decorations hastily pinned to their pajamas, and their snickersnees drawn, I crawled into the welcome shadow of a banana plant. I remained there for an hour, by which time the excitement and the people had cleared away. And then, my dear Goodwin—excuse me—I saw you sneak back and pluck that ripe and juicy valise from the orange tree. I followed you, and saw you take it to your own house. A hundred-thousand-dollar crop from one orange tree in a season about breaks the record of the fruit-growing industry.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Being a gentleman at that time, of course, I never mentioned the incident to anyone. But this morning I was kicked out of a saloon, my code of honour is all out at the elbows, and I’d sell my mother’s prayerbook for three fingers of <i>aguardiente</i>. I’m not putting on the screws hard. It ought to be worth a thousand to you for me to have slept on that cot through the whole business without waking up and seeing anything.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Goodwin opened two more letters, and made memoranda in pencil on them. Then he called “Manuel!” to his secretary, who came, spryly.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The <i>Ariel</i>—when does she sail?” asked Goodwin.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Señor,” answered the youth, “at three this afternoon. She drops down-coast to Punta Soledad to complete her cargo of fruit. From there she sails for New Orleans without delay.”</p>
|
||||
@ -59,7 +59,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Not a <i>centavo</i>,” said Goodwin, firmly, “until you are on board the <i>Ariel</i>. You would be drunk in thirty minutes if you had money now.”</p>
|
||||
<p>But he noticed the blood-streaked eyeballs, the relaxed form and the shaking hands of “Beelzebub;” and he stepped into the dining room through the low window, and brought out a glass and a decanter of brandy.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Take a bracer, anyway, before you go,” he proposed, even as a man to the friend whom he entertains.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Beelzebub” Blythe’s eyes glistened at the sight of the solace for which his soul burned. To-day for the first time his poisoned nerves had been denied their steadying dose; and their retort was a mounting torment. He grasped the decanter and rattled its crystal mouth against the glass in his trembling hand. He flushed the glass, and then stood erect, holding it aloft for an instant. For one fleeting moment he held his head above the drowning waves of his abyss. He nodded easily at Goodwin, raised his brimming glass and murmured a “health” that men had used in his ancient Paradise Lost. And then so suddenly that he spilled the brandy over his hand, he set down his glass, untasted.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Beelzebub” Blythe’s eyes glistened at the sight of the solace for which his soul burned. Today for the first time his poisoned nerves had been denied their steadying dose; and their retort was a mounting torment. He grasped the decanter and rattled its crystal mouth against the glass in his trembling hand. He flushed the glass, and then stood erect, holding it aloft for an instant. For one fleeting moment he held his head above the drowning waves of his abyss. He nodded easily at Goodwin, raised his brimming glass and murmured a “health” that men had used in his ancient Paradise Lost. And then so suddenly that he spilled the brandy over his hand, he set down his glass, untasted.</p>
|
||||
<p>“In two hours,” his dry lips muttered to Goodwin, as he marched down the steps and turned his face toward the town.</p>
|
||||
<p>In the edge of the cool banana grove “Beelzebub” halted, and snapped the tongue of his belt buckle into another hole.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I couldn’t do it,” he explained, feverishly, to the waving banana fronds. “I wanted to, but I couldn’t. A gentleman can’t drink with the man that he blackmails.”</p>
|
||||
|
@ -28,7 +28,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Keogh dipped his pen, and wrote at Johnny’s dictation. With many pauses, filled in with smoke and sundry travellings of the bottle and glasses, the following reply to the Dalesburg communication was perpetrated:<br/></p>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps"><abbr>Mr.</abbr> Obadiah Patterson</span>,<br/><span class="ind2">Dalesburg, Ala.</span></p>
|
||||
<p class="noindent"><i>Dear Sir:</i> In reply to your favour of July 2d, I have the honour to inform you that, according to my opinion, there is no place on the habitable globe that presents to the eye stronger evidence of the need of a first-class shoe store than does the town of Coralio. There are 3,000 inhabitants in the place, and not a single shoe store! The situation speaks for itself. This coast is rapidly becoming the goal of enterprising business men, but the shoe business is one that has been sadly overlooked or neglected. In fact, there are a considerable number of our citizens actually without shoes at present.</p>
|
||||
<p class="noindent"><i>Dear Sir:</i> In reply to your favour of July 2nd, I have the honour to inform you that, according to my opinion, there is no place on the habitable globe that presents to the eye stronger evidence of the need of a first-class shoe store than does the town of Coralio. There are 3,000 inhabitants in the place, and not a single shoe store! The situation speaks for itself. This coast is rapidly becoming the goal of enterprising business men, but the shoe business is one that has been sadly overlooked or neglected. In fact, there are a considerable number of our citizens actually without shoes at present.</p>
|
||||
<p>Besides the want above mentioned, there is also a crying need for a brewery, a college of higher mathematics, a coal yard, and a clean and intellectual Punch and Judy show. I have the honour to be, sir,</p>
|
||||
<p class="ind6">Your Obt. Servant,</p>
|
||||
<p class="noindent">
|
||||
@ -39,7 +39,7 @@
|
||||
<p class="noindent"><abbr>P.S.</abbr>—Hello! Uncle Obadiah. How’s the old burg racking along? What would the government do without you and me? Look out for a green-headed parrot and a bunch of bananas soon, from your old friend</p>
|
||||
<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Johnny</span>.<br/></p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>“I throw in that postscript,” explained the consul, “so Uncle Obadiah won’t take offence at the official tone of the letter! Now, Billy, you get that correspondence fixed up, and send Pancho to the post-office with it. The <i>Ariadne</i> takes the mail out to-morrow if they make up that load of fruit to-day.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I throw in that postscript,” explained the consul, “so Uncle Obadiah won’t take offence at the official tone of the letter! Now, Billy, you get that correspondence fixed up, and send Pancho to the post-office with it. The <i>Ariadne</i> takes the mail out tomorrow if they make up that load of fruit today.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The night programme in Coralio never varied. The recreations of the people were soporific and flat. They wandered about, barefoot and aimless, speaking lowly and smoking cigar or cigarette. Looking down on the dimly lighted ways one seemed to see a threading maze of brunette ghosts tangled with a procession of insane fireflies. In some houses the thrumming of lugubrious guitars added to the depression of the <i>triste</i> night. Giant tree-frogs rattled in the foliage as loudly as the end man’s “bones” in a minstrel troupe. By nine o’clock the streets were almost deserted.</p>
|
||||
<p>Nor at the consulate was there often a change of bill. Keogh would come there nightly, for Coralio’s one cool place was the little seaward porch of that official residence.</p>
|
||||
<p>The brandy would be kept moving; and before midnight sentiment would begin to stir in the heart of the self-exiled consul. Then he would relate to Keogh the story of his ended romance. Each night Keogh would listen patiently to the tale, and be ready with untiring sympathy.</p>
|
||||
@ -51,14 +51,14 @@
|
||||
<p>“Not for a minute, my boy,” would be the last sounds heard by the conqueror of Cupid.</p>
|
||||
<p>At this point Johnny would fall into a gentle slumber, and Keogh would saunter out to his own shack under the calabash tree at the edge of the plaza.</p>
|
||||
<p>In a day or two the letter from the Dalesburg postmaster and its answer had been forgotten by the Coralio exiles. But on the 26th day of July the fruit of the reply appeared upon the tree of events.</p>
|
||||
<p>The <i>Andador</i>, a fruit steamer that visited Coralio regularly, drew into the offing and anchored. The beach was lined with spectators while the quarantine doctor and the custom-house crew rowed out to attend to their duties.</p>
|
||||
<p>The <i>Andador</i>, a fruit steamer that visited Coralio regularly, drew into the offing and anchored. The beach was lined with spectators while the quarantine doctor and the customhouse crew rowed out to attend to their duties.</p>
|
||||
<p>An hour later Billy Keogh lounged into the consulate, clean and cool in his linen clothes, and grinning like a pleased shark.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Guess what?” he said to Johnny, lounging in his hammock.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Too hot to guess,” said Johnny, lazily.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Your shoe-store man’s come,” said Keogh, rolling the sweet morsel on his tongue, “with a stock of goods big enough to supply the continent as far down as Terra del Fuego. They’re carting his cases over to the custom-house now. Six barges full they brought ashore and have paddled back for the rest. Oh, ye saints in glory! won’t there be regalements in the air when he gets onto the joke and has an interview with <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Consul? It’ll be worth nine years in the tropics just to witness that one joyful moment.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Your shoe-store man’s come,” said Keogh, rolling the sweet morsel on his tongue, “with a stock of goods big enough to supply the continent as far down as Terra del Fuego. They’re carting his cases over to the customhouse now. Six barges full they brought ashore and have paddled back for the rest. Oh, ye saints in glory! won’t there be regalements in the air when he gets onto the joke and has an interview with <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Consul? It’ll be worth nine years in the tropics just to witness that one joyful moment.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Keogh loved to take his mirth easily. He selected a clean place on the matting and lay upon the floor. The walls shook with his enjoyment. Johnny turned half over and blinked.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Don’t tell me,” he said, “that anybody was fool enough to take that letter seriously.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Four-thousand-dollar stock of goods!” gasped Keogh, in ecstasy. “Talk about coals to Newcastle! Why didn’t he take a ship-load of palm-leaf fans to Spitzbergen while he was about it? Saw the old codger on the beach. You ought to have been there when he put on his specs and squinted at the five hundred or so barefooted citizens standing around.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Four-thousand-dollar stock of goods!” gasped Keogh, in ecstasy. “Talk about coals to Newcastle! Why didn’t he take a shipload of palm-leaf fans to Spitzbergen while he was about it? Saw the old codger on the beach. You ought to have been there when he put on his specs and squinted at the five hundred or so barefooted citizens standing around.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Are you telling the truth, Billy?” asked the consul, weakly.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Am I? You ought to see the buncoed gentleman’s daughter he brought along. Looks! She makes the brick-dust señoritas here look like tar-babies.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Go on,” said Johnny, “if you can stop that asinine giggling. I hate to see a grown man make a laughing hyena of himself.”</p>
|
||||
@ -69,7 +69,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Situation has got to be met, Johnny,” he said, with some success at seriousness. “I didn’t think about its being your girl until you spoke. First thing to do is to get them comfortable quarters. You go down and face the music, and I’ll trot out to Goodwin’s and see if <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Goodwin won’t take them in. They’ve got the decentest house in town.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Bless you, Billy!” said the consul. “I knew you wouldn’t desert me. The world’s bound to come to an end, but maybe we can stave it off for a day or two.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Keogh hoisted his umbrella and set out for Goodwin’s house. Johnny put on his coat and hat. He picked up the brandy bottle, but set it down again without drinking, and marched bravely down to the beach.</p>
|
||||
<p>In the shade of the custom-house walls he found <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hemstetter and Rosine surrounded by a mass of gaping citizens. The customs officers were ducking and scraping, while the captain of the <i>Andador</i> interpreted the business of the new arrivals. Rosine looked healthy and very much alive. She was gazing at the strange scenes around her with amused interest. There was a faint blush upon her round cheek as she greeted her old admirer. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hemstetter shook hands with Johnny in a very friendly way. He was an oldish, impractical man—one of that numerous class of erratic business men who are forever dissatisfied, and seeking a change.</p>
|
||||
<p>In the shade of the customhouse walls he found <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hemstetter and Rosine surrounded by a mass of gaping citizens. The customs officers were ducking and scraping, while the captain of the <i>Andador</i> interpreted the business of the new arrivals. Rosine looked healthy and very much alive. She was gazing at the strange scenes around her with amused interest. There was a faint blush upon her round cheek as she greeted her old admirer. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hemstetter shook hands with Johnny in a very friendly way. He was an oldish, impractical man—one of that numerous class of erratic business men who are forever dissatisfied, and seeking a change.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I am very glad to see you, John—may I call you John?” he said. “Let me thank you for your prompt answer to our postmaster’s letter of inquiry. He volunteered to write to you on my behalf. I was looking about for something different in the way of a business in which the profits would be greater. I had noticed in the papers that this coast was receiving much attention from investors. I am extremely grateful for your advice to come. I sold out everything that I possess, and invested the proceeds in as fine a stock of shoes as could be bought in the North. You have a picturesque town here, John. I hope business will be as good as your letter justifies me in expecting.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Johnny’s agony was abbreviated by the arrival of Keogh, who hurried up with the news that <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Goodwin would be much pleased to place rooms at the disposal of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hemstetter and his daughter. So there <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hemstetter and Rosine were at once conducted and left to recuperate from the fatigue of the voyage, while Johnny went down to see that the cases of shoes were safely stored in the customs warehouse pending their examination by the officials. Keogh, grinning like a shark, skirmished about to find Goodwin, to instruct him not to expose to <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hemstetter the true state of Coralio as a shoe market until Johnny had been given a chance to redeem the situation, if such a thing were possible.</p>
|
||||
<p>That night the consul and Keogh held a desperate consultation on the breezy porch of the consulate.</p>
|
||||
@ -81,8 +81,8 @@
|
||||
<p>“I lied,” repeated the consul, “every time. I never forgot her for one minute. I was an obstinate ass for running away just because she said ‘No’ once. And I was too proud a fool to go back. I talked with Rosine a few minutes this evening up at Goodwin’s. I found out one thing. You remember that farmer fellow who was always after her?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Dink Pawson?” asked Keogh.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Pink Dawson. Well, he wasn’t a hill of beans to her. She says she didn’t believe a word of the things he told her about me. But I’m sewed up now, Billy. That tomfool letter we sent ruined whatever chance I had left. She’ll despise me when she finds out that her old father has been made the victim of a joke that a decent school boy wouldn’t have been guilty of. Shoes! Why he couldn’t sell twenty pairs of shoes in Coralio if he kept store here for twenty years. You put a pair of shoes on one of these Caribs or Spanish brown boys and what’d he do? Stand on his head and squeal until he’d kicked ’em off. None of ’em ever wore shoes and they never will. If I send ’em back home I’ll have to tell the whole story, and what’ll she think of me? I want that girl worse than ever, Billy, and now when she’s in reach I’ve lost her forever because I tried to be funny when the thermometer was at 102.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Keep cheerful,” said the optimistic Keogh. “And let ’em open the store. I’ve been busy myself this afternoon. We can stir up a temporary boom in foot-gear anyhow. I’ll buy six pairs when the doors open. I’ve been around and seen all the fellows and explained the catastrophe. They’ll all buy shoes like they was centipedes. Frank Goodwin will take cases of ’em. The Geddies want about eleven pairs between ’em. Clancy is going to invest the savings of weeks, and even old Doc Gregg wants three pairs of alligator-hide slippers if they’ve got any tens. Blanchard got a look at Miss Hemstetter; and as he’s a Frenchman, no less than a dozen pairs will do for him.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“A dozen customers,” said Johnny, “for a $4,000 stock of shoes! It won’t work. There’s a big problem here to figure out. You go home, Billy, and leave me alone. I’ve got to work at it all by myself. Take that bottle of Three-star along with you—no, sir; not another ounce of booze for the United States consul. I’ll sit here to-night and pull out the think stop. If there’s a soft place on this proposition anywhere I’ll land on it. If there isn’t there’ll be another wreck to the credit of the gorgeous tropics.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Keep cheerful,” said the optimistic Keogh. “And let ’em open the store. I’ve been busy myself this afternoon. We can stir up a temporary boom in footgear anyhow. I’ll buy six pairs when the doors open. I’ve been around and seen all the fellows and explained the catastrophe. They’ll all buy shoes like they was centipedes. Frank Goodwin will take cases of ’em. The Geddies want about eleven pairs between ’em. Clancy is going to invest the savings of weeks, and even old Doc Gregg wants three pairs of alligator-hide slippers if they’ve got any tens. Blanchard got a look at Miss Hemstetter; and as he’s a Frenchman, no less than a dozen pairs will do for him.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“A dozen customers,” said Johnny, “for a $4,000 stock of shoes! It won’t work. There’s a big problem here to figure out. You go home, Billy, and leave me alone. I’ve got to work at it all by myself. Take that bottle of Three-star along with you—no, sir; not another ounce of booze for the United States consul. I’ll sit here tonight and pull out the think stop. If there’s a soft place on this proposition anywhere I’ll land on it. If there isn’t there’ll be another wreck to the credit of the gorgeous tropics.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Keogh left, feeling that he could be of no use. Johnny laid a handful of cigars on a table and stretched himself in a steamer chair. When the sudden daylight broke, silvering the harbour ripples, he was still sitting there. Then he got up, whistling a little tune, and took his bath.</p>
|
||||
<p>At nine o’clock he walked down to the dingy little cable office and hung for half an hour over a blank. The result of his application was the following message, which he signed and had transmitted at a cost of $33:<br/></p>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
|
@ -15,18 +15,18 @@
|
||||
<p>“Oh, they’re awfully shy,” explained Johnny, as he wiped his forehead nervously. “They’ll get the habit pretty soon. They’ll come with a rush when they do come.”</p>
|
||||
<p>One afternoon Keogh dropped into the consul’s office, chewing an unlighted cigar thoughtfully.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Got anything up your sleeve?” he inquired of Johnny. “If you have it’s about time to show it. If you can borrow some gent’s hat in the audience, and make a lot of customers for an idle stock of shoes come out of it, you’d better spiel. The boys have all laid in enough footwear to last ’em ten years; and there’s nothing doing in the shoe store but dolcy far nienty. I just came by there. Your venerable victim was standing in the door, gazing through his specs at the bare toes passing by his emporium. The natives here have got the true artistic temperament. Me and Clancy took eighteen tintypes this morning in two hours. There’s been but one pair of shoes sold all day. Blanchard went in and bought a pair of fur-lined house-slippers because he thought he saw Miss Hemstetter go into the store. I saw him throw the slippers into the lagoon afterwards.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“There’s a Mobile fruit steamer coming in to-morrow or next day,” said Johnny. “We can’t do anything until then.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“There’s a Mobile fruit steamer coming in tomorrow or next day,” said Johnny. “We can’t do anything until then.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“What are you going to do—try to create a demand?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Political economy isn’t your strong point,” said the consul, impudently. “You can’t create a demand. But you can create a necessity for a demand. That’s what I am going to do.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Two weeks after the consul sent his cable, a fruit steamer brought him a huge, mysterious brown bale of some unknown commodity. Johnny’s influence with the custom-house people was sufficiently strong for him to get the goods turned over to him without the usual inspection. He had the bale taken to the consulate and snugly stowed in the back room.</p>
|
||||
<p>That night he ripped open a corner of it and took out a handful of the cockleburrs. He examined them with the care with which a warrior examines his arms before he goes forth to battle for his lady-love and life. The burrs were the ripe August product, as hard as filberts, and bristling with spines as tough and sharp as needles. Johnny whistled softly a little tune, and went out to find Billy Keogh.</p>
|
||||
<p>Later in the night, when Coralio was steeped in slumber, he and Billy went forth into the deserted streets with their coats bulging like balloons. All up and down the Calle Grande they went, sowing the sharp burrs carefully in the sand, along the narrow sidewalks, in every foot of grass between the silent houses. And then they took the side streets and by-ways, missing none. No place where the foot of man, woman or child might fall was slighted. Many trips they made to and from the prickly hoard. And then, nearly at the dawn, they laid themselves down to rest calmly, as great generals do after planning a victory according to the revised tactics, and slept, knowing that they had sowed with the accuracy of Satan sowing tares and the perseverance of Paul planting.</p>
|
||||
<p>Two weeks after the consul sent his cable, a fruit steamer brought him a huge, mysterious brown bale of some unknown commodity. Johnny’s influence with the customhouse people was sufficiently strong for him to get the goods turned over to him without the usual inspection. He had the bale taken to the consulate and snugly stowed in the back room.</p>
|
||||
<p>That night he ripped open a corner of it and took out a handful of the cockleburrs. He examined them with the care with which a warrior examines his arms before he goes forth to battle for his ladylove and life. The burrs were the ripe August product, as hard as filberts, and bristling with spines as tough and sharp as needles. Johnny whistled softly a little tune, and went out to find Billy Keogh.</p>
|
||||
<p>Later in the night, when Coralio was steeped in slumber, he and Billy went forth into the deserted streets with their coats bulging like balloons. All up and down the Calle Grande they went, sowing the sharp burrs carefully in the sand, along the narrow sidewalks, in every foot of grass between the silent houses. And then they took the side streets and byways, missing none. No place where the foot of man, woman or child might fall was slighted. Many trips they made to and from the prickly hoard. And then, nearly at the dawn, they laid themselves down to rest calmly, as great generals do after planning a victory according to the revised tactics, and slept, knowing that they had sowed with the accuracy of Satan sowing tares and the perseverance of Paul planting.</p>
|
||||
<p>With the rising sun came the purveyors of fruits and meats, and arranged their wares in and around the little market-house. At one end of the town near the seashore the market-house stood; and the sowing of the burrs had not been carried that far. The dealers waited long past the hour when their sales usually began. None came to buy. “<i>Qué hay?</i>” they began to exclaim, one to another.</p>
|
||||
<p>At their accustomed time, from every ‘dobe and palm hut and grass-thatched shack and dim <i>patio</i> glided women—black women, brown women, lemon-colored women, women dun and yellow and tawny. They were the marketers starting to purchase the family supply of cassava, plantains, meat, fowls, and tortillas. Décolleté they were and bare-armed and bare-footed, with a single skirt reaching below the knee. Stolid and ox-eyed, they stepped from their doorways into the narrow paths or upon the soft grass of the streets.</p>
|
||||
<p>At their accustomed time, from every ‘dobe and palm hut and grass-thatched shack and dim <i>patio</i> glided women—black women, brown women, lemon-colored women, women dun and yellow and tawny. They were the marketers starting to purchase the family supply of cassava, plantains, meat, fowls, and tortillas. Décolleté they were and bare-armed and barefooted, with a single skirt reaching below the knee. Stolid and ox-eyed, they stepped from their doorways into the narrow paths or upon the soft grass of the streets.</p>
|
||||
<p>The first to emerge uttered ambiguous squeals, and raised one foot quickly. Another step and they sat down, with shrill cries of alarm, to pick at the new and painful insects that had stung them upon the feet. “<i>Qué picadores diablos!</i>” they screeched to one another across the narrow ways. Some tried the grass instead of the paths, but there they were also stung and bitten by the strange little prickly balls. They plumped down in the grass, and added their lamentations to those of their sisters in the sandy paths. All through the town was heard the plaint of the feminine jabber. The venders in the market still wondered why no customers came.</p>
|
||||
<p>Then men, lords of the earth, came forth. They, too, began to hop, to dance, to limp, and to curse. They stood stranded and foolish, or stooped to pluck at the scourge that attacked their feet and ankles. Some loudly proclaimed the pest to be poisonous spiders of an unknown species.</p>
|
||||
<p>And then the children ran out for their morning romp. And now to the uproar was added the howls of limping infants and cockleburred childhood. Every minute the advancing day brought forth fresh victims.</p>
|
||||
<p>Doña Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas stepped from her honoured doorway, as was her daily custom, to procure fresh bread from the <i>panaderia</i> across the street. She was clad in a skirt of flowered yellow satin, a chemise of ruffled linen, and wore a purple mantilla from the looms of Spain. Her lemon-tinted feet, alas! were bare. Her progress was majestic, for were not her ancestors hidalgos of Aragon? Three steps she made across the velvety grass, and set her aristocratic sole upon a bunch of Johnny’s burrs. Doña Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas emitted a yowl even as a wild-cat. Turning about, she fell upon hands and knees, and crawled—ay, like a beast of the field she crawled back to her honourable door-sill.</p>
|
||||
<p>Doña Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas stepped from her honoured doorway, as was her daily custom, to procure fresh bread from the <i>panaderia</i> across the street. She was clad in a skirt of flowered yellow satin, a chemise of ruffled linen, and wore a purple mantilla from the looms of Spain. Her lemon-tinted feet, alas! were bare. Her progress was majestic, for were not her ancestors hidalgos of Aragon? Three steps she made across the velvety grass, and set her aristocratic sole upon a bunch of Johnny’s burrs. Doña Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas emitted a yowl even as a wildcat. Turning about, she fell upon hands and knees, and crawled—ay, like a beast of the field she crawled back to her honourable doorsill.</p>
|
||||
<p>Don Señor Ildefonso Federico Valdazar, <i>Juez de la Paz</i>, weighing twenty stone, attempted to convey his bulk to the <i>pulperia</i> at the corner of the plaza in order to assuage his matutinal thirst. The first plunge of his unshod foot into the cool grass struck a concealed mine. Don Ildefonso fell like a crumpled cathedral, crying out that he had been fatally bitten by a deadly scorpion. Everywhere were the shoeless citizens hopping, stumbling, limping, and picking from their feet the venomous insects that had come in a single night to harass them.</p>
|
||||
<p>The first to perceive the remedy was Estebán Delgado, the barber, a man of travel and education. Sitting upon a stone, he plucked burrs from his toes, and made oration:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Behold, my friends, these bugs of the devil! I know them well. They soar through the skies in swarms like pigeons. These are the dead ones that fell during the night. In Yucatan I have seen them as large as oranges. Yes! There they hiss like serpents, and have wings like bats. It is the shoes—the shoes that one needs! <i>Zapatos—zapatos para mi!</i>”</p>
|
||||
@ -44,7 +44,7 @@
|
||||
<p>There, in the same dark and diabolical manner, he repeated his success; and came back with a bag of money and not so much as a shoestring.</p>
|
||||
<p>And then he besought his great Uncle of the waving goatee and starred vest to accept his resignation, for the lotus no longer lured him. He hankered for the spinach and cress of Dalesburg.</p>
|
||||
<p>The services of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> William Terence Keogh as acting consul, <i>pro tem.</i>, were suggested and accepted, and Johnny sailed with the Hemstetters back to his native shores.</p>
|
||||
<p>Keogh slipped into the sinecure of the American consulship with the ease that never left him even in such high places. The tintype establishment was soon to become a thing of the past, although its deadly work along the peaceful and helpless Spanish Main was never effaced. The restless partners were about to be off again, scouting ahead of the slow ranks of Fortune. But now they would take different ways. There were rumours of a promising uprising in Peru; and thither the martial Clancy would turn his adventurous steps. As for Keogh, he was figuring in his mind and on quires of Government letter-heads a scheme that dwarfed the art of misrepresenting the human countenance upon tin.</p>
|
||||
<p>Keogh slipped into the sinecure of the American consulship with the ease that never left him even in such high places. The tintype establishment was soon to become a thing of the past, although its deadly work along the peaceful and helpless Spanish Main was never effaced. The restless partners were about to be off again, scouting ahead of the slow ranks of Fortune. But now they would take different ways. There were rumours of a promising uprising in Peru; and thither the martial Clancy would turn his adventurous steps. As for Keogh, he was figuring in his mind and on quires of Government letterheads a scheme that dwarfed the art of misrepresenting the human countenance upon tin.</p>
|
||||
<p>“What suits me,” Keogh used to say, “in the way of a business proposition is something diversified that looks like a longer shot than it is—something in the way of a genteel graft that isn’t worked enough for the correspondence schools to be teaching it by mail. I take the long end; but I like to have at least as good a chance to win as a man learning to play poker on an ocean steamer, or running for governor of Texas on the Republican ticket. And when I cash in my winnings, I don’t want to find any widows’ and orphans’ chips in my stack.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The grass-grown globe was the green table on which Keogh gambled. The games he played were of his own invention. He was no grubber after the diffident dollar. Nor did he care to follow it with horn and hounds. Rather he loved to coax it with egregious and brilliant flies from its habitat in the waters of strange streams. Yet Keogh was a business man; and his schemes, in spite of their singularity, were as solidly set as the plans of a building contractor. In Arthur’s time Sir William Keogh would have been a Knight of the Round Table. In these modern days he rides abroad, seeking the Graft instead of the Grail.</p>
|
||||
<p>Three days after Johnny’s departure, two small schooners appeared off Coralio. After some delay a boat put off from one of them, and brought a sunburned young man ashore. This young man had a shrewd and calculating eye; and he gazed with amazement at the strange things that he saw. He found on the beach some one who directed him to the consul’s office; and thither he made his way at a nervous gait.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -10,14 +10,14 @@
|
||||
<h2>XIV</h2>
|
||||
<h3>MASTERS OF ARTS<br/> </h3>
|
||||
<p>A two-inch stub of a blue pencil was the wand with which Keogh performed the preliminary acts of his magic. So, with this he covered paper with diagrams and figures while he waited for the United States of America to send down to Coralio a successor to Atwood, resigned.</p>
|
||||
<p>The new scheme that his mind had conceived, his stout heart indorsed, and his blue pencil corroborated, was laid around the characteristics and human frailties of the new president of Anchuria. These characteristics, and the situation out of which Keogh hoped to wrest a golden tribute, deserve chronicling contributive to the clear order of events.</p>
|
||||
<p>The new scheme that his mind had conceived, his stout heart endorsed, and his blue pencil corroborated, was laid around the characteristics and human frailties of the new president of Anchuria. These characteristics, and the situation out of which Keogh hoped to wrest a golden tribute, deserve chronicling contributive to the clear order of events.</p>
|
||||
<p>President Losada—many called him Dictator—was a man whose genius would have made him conspicuous even among Anglo-Saxons, had not that genius been intermixed with other traits that were petty and subversive. He had some of the lofty patriotism of Washington (the man he most admired), the force of Napoleon, and much of the wisdom of the sages. These characteristics might have justified him in the assumption of the title of “The Illustrious Liberator,” had they not been accompanied by a stupendous and amazing vanity that kept him in the less worthy ranks of the dictators.</p>
|
||||
<p>Yet he did his country great service. With a mighty grasp he shook it nearly free from the shackles of ignorance and sloth and the vermin that fed upon it, and all but made it a power in the council of nations. He established schools and hospitals, built roads, bridges, railroads and palaces, and bestowed generous subsidies upon the arts and sciences. He was the absolute despot and the idol of his people. The wealth of the country poured into his hands. Other presidents had been rapacious without reason. Losada amassed enormous wealth, but his people had their share of the benefits.</p>
|
||||
<p>The joint in his armour was his insatiate passion for monuments and tokens commemorating his glory. In every town he caused to be erected statues of himself bearing legends in praise of his greatness. In the walls of every public edifice, tablets were fixed reciting his splendour and the gratitude of his subjects. His statuettes and portraits were scattered throughout the land in every house and hut. One of the sycophants in his court painted him as <abbr>St.</abbr> John, with a halo and a train of attendants in full uniform. Losada saw nothing incongruous in this picture, and had it hung in a church in the capital. He ordered from a French sculptor a marble group including himself with Napoleon, Alexander the Great, and one or two others whom he deemed worthy of the honour.</p>
|
||||
<p>He ransacked Europe for decorations, employing policy, money and intrigue to cajole the orders he coveted from kings and rulers. On state occasions his breast was covered from shoulder to shoulder with crosses, stars, golden roses, medals and ribbons. It was said that the man who could contrive for him a new decoration, or invent some new method of extolling his greatness, might plunge a hand deep into the treasury.</p>
|
||||
<p>This was the man upon whom Billy Keogh had his eye. The gentle buccaneer had observed the rain of favors that fell upon those who ministered to the president’s vanities, and he did not deem it his duty to hoist his umbrella against the scattering drops of liquid fortune.</p>
|
||||
<p>In a few weeks the new consul arrived, releasing Keogh from his temporary duties. He was a young man fresh from college, who lived for botany alone. The consulate at Coralio gave him the opportunity to study tropical flora. He wore smoked glasses, and carried a green umbrella. He filled the cool, back porch of the consulate with plants and specimens so that space for a bottle and chair was not to be found. Keogh gazed on him sadly, but without rancour, and began to pack his gripsack. For his new plot against stagnation along the Spanish Main required of him a voyage overseas.</p>
|
||||
<p>Soon came the <i>Karlsefin</i> again—she of the trampish habits—gleaning a cargo of cocoanuts for a speculative descent upon the New York market. Keogh was booked for a passage on the return trip.</p>
|
||||
<p>Soon came the <i>Karlsefin</i> again—she of the trampish habits—gleaning a cargo of coconuts for a speculative descent upon the New York market. Keogh was booked for a passage on the return trip.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yes, I’m going to New York,” he explained to the group of his countrymen that had gathered on the beach to see him off. “But I’ll be back before you miss me. I’ve undertaken the art education of this piebald country, and I’m not the man to desert it while it’s in the early throes of tintypes.”</p>
|
||||
<p>With this mysterious declaration of his intentions Keogh boarded the <i>Karlsefin</i>.</p>
|
||||
<p>Ten days later, shivering, with the collar of his thin coat turned high, he burst into the studio of Carolus White at the top of a tall building in Tenth Street, New York City.</p>
|
||||
@ -25,7 +25,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Billy Keogh!” exclaimed White, extending the hand that was not busy with the frying pan. “From what part of the uncivilized world, I wonder!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Hello, Carry,” said Keogh, dragging forward a stool, and holding his fingers close to the stove. “I’m glad I found you so soon. I’ve been looking for you all day in the directories and art galleries. The free-lunch man on the corner told me where you were, quick. I was sure you’d be painting pictures yet.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Keogh glanced about the studio with the shrewd eye of a connoisseur in business.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yes, you can do it,” he declared, with many gentle nods of his head. “That big one in the corner with the angels and green clouds and band-wagon is just the sort of thing we want. What would you call that, Carry—scene from Coney Island, ain’t it?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yes, you can do it,” he declared, with many gentle nods of his head. “That big one in the corner with the angels and green clouds and bandwagon is just the sort of thing we want. What would you call that, Carry—scene from Coney Island, ain’t it?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“That,” said White, “I had intended to call ‘The Translation of Elijah,’ but you may be nearer right than I am.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Name doesn’t matter,” said Keogh, largely; “it’s the frame and the varieties of paint that does the trick. Now, I can tell you in a minute what I want. I’ve come on a little voyage of two thousand miles to take you in with me on a scheme. I thought of you as soon as the scheme showed itself to me. How would you like to go back with me and paint a picture? Ninety days for the trip, and five thousand dollars for the job.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Cereal food or hair-tonic posters?” asked White.</p>
|
||||
@ -36,23 +36,23 @@
|
||||
<p>Keogh explained his project. They were to return to Coralio, where White was to pose as a distinguished American portrait painter who was touring in the tropics as a relaxation from his arduous and remunerative professional labours. It was not an unreasonable hope, even to those who had trod in the beaten paths of business, that an artist with so much prestige might secure a commission to perpetuate upon canvas the lineaments of the president, and secure a share of the <i>pesos</i> that were raining upon the caterers to his weaknesses.</p>
|
||||
<p>Keogh had set his price at ten thousand dollars. Artists had been paid more for portraits. He and White were to share the expenses of the trip, and divide the possible profits. Thus he laid the scheme before White, whom he had known in the West before one declared for Art and the other became a Bedouin.</p>
|
||||
<p>Before long the two machinators abandoned the rigour of the bare studio for a snug corner of a café. There they sat far into the night, with old envelopes and Keogh’s stub of blue pencil between them.</p>
|
||||
<p>At twelve o’clock White doubled up in his chair, with his chin on his fist, and shut his eyes at the unbeautiful wall-paper.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ll go you, Billy,” he said, in the quiet tones of decision. “I’ve got two or three hundred saved up for sausages and rent; and I’ll take the chance with you. Five thousand! It will give me two years in Paris and one in Italy. I’ll begin to pack to-morrow.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You’ll begin in ten minutes,” said Keogh. “It’s to-morrow now. The <i>Karlsefin</i> starts back at four P.M. Come on to your painting shop, and I’ll help you.”</p>
|
||||
<p>At twelve o’clock White doubled up in his chair, with his chin on his fist, and shut his eyes at the unbeautiful wallpaper.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ll go you, Billy,” he said, in the quiet tones of decision. “I’ve got two or three hundred saved up for sausages and rent; and I’ll take the chance with you. Five thousand! It will give me two years in Paris and one in Italy. I’ll begin to pack tomorrow.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You’ll begin in ten minutes,” said Keogh. “It’s tomorrow now. The <i>Karlsefin</i> starts back at four P.M. Come on to your painting shop, and I’ll help you.”</p>
|
||||
<p>For five months in the year Coralio is the Newport of Anchuria. Then only does the town possess life. From November to March it is practically the seat of government. The president with his official family sojourns there; and society follows him. The pleasure-loving people make the season one long holiday of amusement and rejoicing. <i>Fiestas</i>, balls, games, sea bathing, processions and small theatres contribute to their enjoyment. The famous Swiss band from the capital plays in the little plaza every evening, while the fourteen carriages and vehicles in the town circle in funereal but complacent procession. Indians from the interior mountains, looking like prehistoric stone idols, come down to peddle their handiwork in the streets. The people throng the narrow ways, a chattering, happy, careless stream of buoyant humanity. Preposterous children rigged out with the shortest of ballet skirts and gilt wings, howl, underfoot, among the effervescent crowds. Especially is the arrival of the presidential party, at the opening of the season, attended with pomp, show and patriotic demonstrations of enthusiasm and delight.</p>
|
||||
<p>When Keogh and White reached their destination, on the return trip of the <i>Karlsefin</i>, the gay winter season was well begun. As they stepped upon the beach they could hear the band playing in the plaza. The village maidens, with fireflies already fixed in their dark locks, were gliding, barefoot and coy-eyed, along the paths. Dandies in white linen, swinging their canes, were beginning their seductive strolls. The air was full of human essence, of artificial enticement, of coquetry, indolence, pleasure—the man-made sense of existence.</p>
|
||||
<p>The first two or three days after their arrival were spent in preliminaries. Keogh escorted the artist about town, introducing him to the little circle of English-speaking residents and pulling whatever wires he could to effect the spreading of White’s fame as a painter. And then Keogh planned a more spectacular demonstration of the idea he wished to keep before the public.</p>
|
||||
<p>He and White engaged rooms in the Hotel de los Estranjeros. The two were clad in new suits of immaculate duck, with American straw hats, and carried canes of remarkable uniqueness and inutility. Few caballeros in Coralio—even the gorgeously uniformed officers of the Anchurian army—were as conspicuous for ease and elegance of demeanour as Keogh and his friend, the great American painter, Señor White.</p>
|
||||
<p>White set up his easel on the beach and made striking sketches of the mountain and sea views. The native population formed at his rear in a vast, chattering semicircle to watch his work. Keogh, with his care for details, had arranged for himself a pose which he carried out with fidelity. His rôle was that of friend to the great artist, a man of affairs and leisure. The visible emblem of his position was a pocket camera.</p>
|
||||
<p>“For branding the man who owns it,” said he, “a genteel dilettante with a bank account and an easy conscience, a steam-yacht ain’t in it with a camera. You see a man doing nothing but loafing around making snap-shots, and you know right away he reads up well in ‘Bradstreet.’ You notice these old millionaire boys—soon as they get through taking everything else in sight they go to taking photographs. People are more impressed by a kodak than they are by a title or a four-carat scarf-pin.” So Keogh strolled blandly about Coralio, snapping the scenery and the shrinking señoritas, while White posed conspicuously in the higher regions of art.</p>
|
||||
<p>White set up his easel on the beach and made striking sketches of the mountain and sea views. The native population formed at his rear in a vast, chattering semicircle to watch his work. Keogh, with his care for details, had arranged for himself a pose which he carried out with fidelity. His role was that of friend to the great artist, a man of affairs and leisure. The visible emblem of his position was a pocket camera.</p>
|
||||
<p>“For branding the man who owns it,” said he, “a genteel dilettante with a bank account and an easy conscience, a steam-yacht ain’t in it with a camera. You see a man doing nothing but loafing around making snapshots, and you know right away he reads up well in ‘Bradstreet.’ You notice these old millionaire boys—soon as they get through taking everything else in sight they go to taking photographs. People are more impressed by a kodak than they are by a title or a four-carat scarf-pin.” So Keogh strolled blandly about Coralio, snapping the scenery and the shrinking señoritas, while White posed conspicuously in the higher regions of art.</p>
|
||||
<p>Two weeks after their arrival, the scheme began to bear fruit. An aide-de-camp of the president drove to the hotel in a dashing victoria. The president desired that Señor White come to the Casa Morena for an informal interview.</p>
|
||||
<p>Keogh gripped his pipe tightly between his teeth. “Not a cent less than ten thousand,” he said to the artist—“remember the price. And in gold or its equivalent—don’t let him stick you with this bargain-counter stuff they call money here.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Perhaps it isn’t that he wants,” said White.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Get out!” said Keogh, with splendid confidence. “I know what he wants. He wants his picture painted by the celebrated young American painter and filibuster now sojourning in his down-trodden country. Off you go.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Get out!” said Keogh, with splendid confidence. “I know what he wants. He wants his picture painted by the celebrated young American painter and filibuster now sojourning in his downtrodden country. Off you go.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The victoria sped away with the artist. Keogh walked up and down, puffing great clouds of smoke from his pipe, and waited. In an hour the victoria swept again to the door of the hotel, deposited White, and vanished. The artist dashed up the stairs, three at a step. Keogh stopped smoking, and became a silent interrogation point.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Landed,” exclaimed White, with his boyish face flushed with elation. “Billy, you are a wonder. He wants a picture. I’ll tell you all about it. By Heavens! that dictator chap is a corker! He’s a dictator clear down to his finger-ends. He’s a kind of combination of Julius Cæsar, Lucifer and Chauncey Depew done in sepia. Polite and grim—that’s his way. The room I saw him in was about ten acres big, and looked like a Mississippi steamboat with its gilding and mirrors and white paint. He talks English better than I can ever hope to. The matter of the price came up. I mentioned ten thousand. I expected him to call the guard and have me taken out and shot. He didn’t move an eyelash. He just waved one of his chestnut hands in a careless way, and said, ‘Whatever you say.’ I am to go back to-morrow and discuss with him the details of the picture.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Landed,” exclaimed White, with his boyish face flushed with elation. “Billy, you are a wonder. He wants a picture. I’ll tell you all about it. By Heavens! that dictator chap is a corker! He’s a dictator clear down to his finger-ends. He’s a kind of combination of Julius Caesar, Lucifer and Chauncey Depew done in sepia. Polite and grim—that’s his way. The room I saw him in was about ten acres big, and looked like a Mississippi steamboat with its gilding and mirrors and white paint. He talks English better than I can ever hope to. The matter of the price came up. I mentioned ten thousand. I expected him to call the guard and have me taken out and shot. He didn’t move an eyelash. He just waved one of his chestnut hands in a careless way, and said, ‘Whatever you say.’ I am to go back tomorrow and discuss with him the details of the picture.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Keogh hung his head. Self-abasement was easy to read in his downcast countenance.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’m failing, Carry,” he said, sorrowfully. “I’m not fit to handle these man’s-size schemes any longer. Peddling oranges in a push-cart is about the suitable graft for me. When I said ten thousand, I swear I thought I had sized up that brown man’s limit to within two cents. He’d have melted down for fifteen thousand just as easy. Say—Carry—you’ll see old man Keogh safe in some nice, quiet idiot asylum, won’t you, if he makes a break like that again?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’m failing, Carry,” he said, sorrowfully. “I’m not fit to handle these man’s-size schemes any longer. Peddling oranges in a pushcart is about the suitable graft for me. When I said ten thousand, I swear I thought I had sized up that brown man’s limit to within two cents. He’d have melted down for fifteen thousand just as easy. Say—Carry—you’ll see old man Keogh safe in some nice, quiet idiot asylum, won’t you, if he makes a break like that again?”</p>
|
||||
<p>The Casa Morena, although only one story in height, was a building of brown stone, luxurious as a palace in its interior. It stood on a low hill in a walled garden of splendid tropical flora at the upper edge of Coralio. The next day the president’s carriage came again for the artist. Keogh went out for a walk along the beach, where he and his “picture box” were now familiar sights. When he returned to the hotel White was sitting in a steamer-chair on the balcony.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well,” said Keogh, “did you and His Nibs decide on the kind of a chromo he wants?”</p>
|
||||
<p>White got up and walked back and forth on the balcony a few times. Then he stopped, and laughed strangely. His face was flushed, and his eyes were bright with a kind of angry amusement.</p>
|
||||
@ -76,25 +76,25 @@
|
||||
<p>“Listen to that!” exclaimed White, bitterly: “I know that much Spanish. They’re shouting, ‘Down with the traitor!’ I heard them before. I felt that they meant me. I was a traitor to Art. The picture had to go.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Down with the blank fool’ would have suited your case better,” said Keogh, with fiery emphasis. “You tear up ten thousand dollars like an old rag because the way you’ve spread on five dollars’ worth of paint hurts your conscience. Next time I pick a side-partner in a scheme the man has got to go before a notary and swear he never even heard the word ‘ideal’ mentioned.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Keogh strode from the room, white-hot. White paid little attention to his resentment. The scorn of Billy Keogh seemed a trifling thing beside the greater self-scorn he had escaped.</p>
|
||||
<p>In Coralio the excitement waxed. An outburst was imminent. The cause of this demonstration of displeasure was the presence in the town of a big, pink-cheeked Englishman, who, it was said, was an agent of his government come to clinch the bargain by which the president placed his people in the hands of a foreign power. It was charged that not only had he given away priceless concessions, but that the public debt was to be transferred into the hands of the English, and the custom-houses turned over to them as a guarantee. The long-enduring people had determined to make their protest felt.</p>
|
||||
<p>In Coralio the excitement waxed. An outburst was imminent. The cause of this demonstration of displeasure was the presence in the town of a big, pink-cheeked Englishman, who, it was said, was an agent of his government come to clinch the bargain by which the president placed his people in the hands of a foreign power. It was charged that not only had he given away priceless concessions, but that the public debt was to be transferred into the hands of the English, and the customhouses turned over to them as a guarantee. The long-enduring people had determined to make their protest felt.</p>
|
||||
<p>On that night, in Coralio and in other towns, their ire found vent. Yelling mobs, mercurial but dangerous, roamed the streets. They overthrew the great bronze statue of the president that stood in the centre of the plaza, and hacked it to shapeless pieces. They tore from public buildings the tablets set there proclaiming the glory of the “Illustrious Liberator.” His pictures in the government offices were demolished. The mobs even attacked the Casa Morena, but were driven away by the military, which remained faithful to the executive. All the night terror reigned.</p>
|
||||
<p>The greatness of Losada was shown by the fact that by noon the next day order was restored, and he was still absolute. He issued proclamations denying positively that any negotiations of any kind had been entered into with England. Sir Stafford Vaughn, the pink-cheeked Englishman, also declared in placards and in public print that his presence there had no international significance. He was a traveller without guile. In fact (so he stated), he had not even spoken with the president or been in his presence since his arrival.</p>
|
||||
<p>During this disturbance, White was preparing for his homeward voyage in the steamship that was to sail within two or three days. About noon, Keogh, the restless, took his camera out with the hope of speeding the lagging hours. The town was now as quiet as if peace had never departed from her perch on the red-tiled roofs.</p>
|
||||
<p>About the middle of the afternoon, Keogh hurried back to the hotel with something decidedly special in his air. He retired to the little room where he developed his pictures.</p>
|
||||
<p>Later on he came out to White on the balcony, with a luminous, grim, predatory smile on his face.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Do you know what that is?” he asked, holding up a 4 × 5 photograph mounted on cardboard.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Snap-shot of a señorita sitting in the sand—alliteration unintentional,” guessed White, lazily.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Snapshot of a señorita sitting in the sand—alliteration unintentional,” guessed White, lazily.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Wrong,” said Keogh with shining eyes. “It’s a slung-shot. It’s a can of dynamite. It’s a gold mine. It’s a sight-draft on your president man for twenty thousand dollars—yes, sir—twenty thousand this time, and no spoiling the picture. No ethics of art in the way. Art! You with your smelly little tubes! I’ve got you skinned to death with a kodak. Take a look at that.”</p>
|
||||
<p>White took the picture in his hand, and gave a long whistle.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Jove!” he exclaimed, “but wouldn’t that stir up a row in town if you let it be seen. How in the world did you get it, Billy?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You know that high wall around the president man’s back garden? I was up there trying to get a bird’s-eye of the town. I happened to notice a chink in the wall where a stone and a lot of plaster had slid out. Thinks I, I’ll take a peep through to see how <abbr>Mr.</abbr> President’s cabbages are growing. The first thing I saw was him and this Sir Englishman sitting at a little table about twenty feet away. They had the table all spread over with documents, and they were hobnobbing over them as thick as two pirates. ’Twas a nice corner of the garden, all private and shady with palms and orange trees, and they had a pail of champagne set by handy in the grass. I knew then was the time for me to make my big hit in Art. So I raised the machine up to the crack, and pressed the button. Just as I did so them old boys shook hands on the deal—you see they took that way in the picture.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Keogh put on his coat and hat.</p>
|
||||
<p>“What are you going to do with it?” asked White.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Me,” said Keogh in a hurt tone, “why, I’m going to tie a pink ribbon to it and hang it on the what-not, of course. I’m surprised at you. But while I’m out you just try to figure out what ginger-cake potentate would be most likely to want to buy this work of art for his private collection—just to keep it out of circulation.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The sunset was reddening the tops of the cocoanut palms when Billy Keogh came back from Casa Morena. He nodded to the artist’s questioning gaze; and lay down on a cot with his hands under the back of his head.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Me,” said Keogh in a hurt tone, “why, I’m going to tie a pink ribbon to it and hang it on the whatnot, of course. I’m surprised at you. But while I’m out you just try to figure out what ginger-cake potentate would be most likely to want to buy this work of art for his private collection—just to keep it out of circulation.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The sunset was reddening the tops of the coconut palms when Billy Keogh came back from Casa Morena. He nodded to the artist’s questioning gaze; and lay down on a cot with his hands under the back of his head.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I saw him. He paid the money like a little man. They didn’t want to let me in at first. I told ’em it was important. Yes, that president man is on the plenty-able list. He’s got a beautiful business system about the way he uses his brains. All I had to do was to hold up the photograph so he could see it, and name the price. He just smiled, and walked over to a safe and got the cash. Twenty one-thousand-dollar brand-new United States Treasury notes he laid on the table, like I’d pay out a dollar and a quarter. Fine notes, too—they crackled with a sound like burning the brush off a ten-acre lot.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Let’s try the feel of one,” said White, curiously. “I never saw a thousand-dollar bill.” Keogh did not immediately respond.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Carry,” he said, in an absent-minded way, “you think a heap of your art, don’t you?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Carry,” he said, in an absentminded way, “you think a heap of your art, don’t you?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“More,” said White, frankly, “than has been for the financial good of myself and my friends.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I thought you were a fool the other day,” went on Keogh, quietly, “and I’m not sure now that you wasn’t. But if you was, so am I. I’ve been in some funny deals, Carry, but I’ve always managed to scramble fair, and match my brains and capital against the other fellow’s. But when it comes to—well, when you’ve got the other fellow cinched, and the screws on him, and he’s got to put up—why, it don’t strike me as being a man’s game. They’ve got a name for it, you know; it’s—confound you, don’t you understand? A fellow feels—it’s something like that blamed art of yours—he—well, I tore that photograph up and laid the pieces on that stack of money and shoved the whole business back across the table. ‘Excuse me, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Losada,’ I said, ‘but I guess I’ve made a mistake in the price. You get the photo for nothing.’ Now, Carry, you get out the pencil, and we’ll do some more figuring. I’d like to save enough out of our capital for you to have some fried sausages in your joint when you get back to New York.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
|
@ -37,7 +37,7 @@
|
||||
<p>The one mistake Dicky made in Coralio was to run out of money at the wrong time. Where his money came from was a puzzle, for the sales of his shop were next to nothing, but that source failed, and at a peculiarly unfortunate time. It was when the <i>comandante</i>, Don Señor el Coronel Encarnacion Rios, looked upon the little saint seated in the shop and felt his heart go pitapat.</p>
|
||||
<p>The <i>comandante</i>, who was versed in all the intricate arts of gallantry, first delicately hinted at his sentiments by donning his dress uniform and strutting up and down fiercely before her window. Pasa, glancing demurely with her saintly eyes, instantly perceived his resemblance to her parrot, Chichi, and was diverted to the extent of a smile. The <i>comandante</i> saw the smile, which was not intended for him. Convinced of an impression made, he entered the shop, confidently, and advanced to open compliment. Pasa froze; he pranced; she flamed royally; he was charmed to injudicious persistence; she commanded him to leave the shop; he tried to capture her hand—and Dicky entered, smiling broadly, full of white wine and the devil.</p>
|
||||
<p>He spent five minutes in punishing the <i>comandante</i> scientifically and carefully, so that the pain might be prolonged as far as possible. At the end of that time he pitched the rash wooer out the door upon the stones of the street, senseless.</p>
|
||||
<p>A barefooted policeman who had been watching the affair from across the street blew a whistle. A squad of four soldiers came running from the <i>cuartel</i> around the corner. When they saw that the offender was Dicky, they stopped, and blew more whistles, which brought out reënforcements of eight. Deeming the odds against them sufficiently reduced, the military advanced upon the disturber.</p>
|
||||
<p>A barefooted policeman who had been watching the affair from across the street blew a whistle. A squad of four soldiers came running from the <i>cuartel</i> around the corner. When they saw that the offender was Dicky, they stopped, and blew more whistles, which brought out reenforcements of eight. Deeming the odds against them sufficiently reduced, the military advanced upon the disturber.</p>
|
||||
<p>Dicky, being thoroughly imbued with the martial spirit, stooped and drew the <i>comandante’s</i> sword, which was girded about him, and charged his foe. He chased the standing army four squares, playfully prodding its squealing rear and hacking at its ginger-coloured heels.</p>
|
||||
<p>But he was not so successful with the civic authorities. Six muscular, nimble policemen overpowered him and conveyed him, triumphantly but warily, to jail. “<i>El Diablo Colorado</i>” they dubbed him, and derided the military for its defeat.</p>
|
||||
<p>Dicky, with the rest of the prisoners, could look out through the barred door at the grass of the little plaza, at a row of orange trees and the red tile roofs and ‘dobe walls of a line of insignificant stores.</p>
|
||||
@ -57,7 +57,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“The <i>Catarina</i>.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Of the Vesuvius line?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Without doubt, of that line.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Go you, <i>picarilla</i>,” said Dicky joyously to Pasa, “to the American consul. Tell him I wish to speak with him. See that he comes at once. And look you! let me see a different look in those eyes, for I promise your head shall rest upon this arm to-night.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Go you, <i>picarilla</i>,” said Dicky joyously to Pasa, “to the American consul. Tell him I wish to speak with him. See that he comes at once. And look you! let me see a different look in those eyes, for I promise your head shall rest upon this arm tonight.”</p>
|
||||
<p>It was an hour before the consul came. He held his green umbrella under his arm, and mopped his forehead impatiently.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now, see here, Maloney,” he began, captiously, “you fellows seem to think you can cut up any kind of row, and expect me to pull you out of it. I’m neither the War Department nor a gold mine. This country has its laws, you know, and there’s one against pounding the senses out of the regular army. You Irish are forever getting into trouble. I don’t see what I can do. Anything like tobacco, now, to make you comfortable—or <span class="nowrap">newspapers—”</span></p>
|
||||
<p>“Son of Eli,” interrupted Dicky, gravely, “you haven’t changed an iota. That is almost a duplicate of the speech you made when old Koen’s donkeys and geese got into the chapel loft, and the culprits wanted to hide in your room.”</p>
|
||||
@ -87,9 +87,9 @@
|
||||
</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
</table>
|
||||
<p>So, that night Dicky sat by the window of the room over his shop and his little saint sat close by, working at something silken and dainty. Dicky was thoughtful and grave. His red hair was in an unusual state of disorder. Pasa’s fingers often ached to smooth and arrange it, but Dicky would never allow it. He was poring, to-night, over a great litter of maps and books and papers on his table until that perpendicular line came between his brows that always distressed Pasa. Presently she went and brought his hat, and stood with it until he looked up, inquiringly.</p>
|
||||
<p>So, that night Dicky sat by the window of the room over his shop and his little saint sat close by, working at something silken and dainty. Dicky was thoughtful and grave. His red hair was in an unusual state of disorder. Pasa’s fingers often ached to smooth and arrange it, but Dicky would never allow it. He was poring, tonight, over a great litter of maps and books and papers on his table until that perpendicular line came between his brows that always distressed Pasa. Presently she went and brought his hat, and stood with it until he looked up, inquiringly.</p>
|
||||
<p>“It is sad for you here,” she explained. “Go out and drink <i>vino blanco</i>. Come back when you get that smile you used to wear. That is what I wish to see.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Dicky laughed and threw down his papers. “The <i>vino blanco</i> stage is past. It has served its turn. Perhaps, after all, there was less entered my mouth and more my ears than people thought. But, there will be no more maps or frowns to-night. I promise you that. Come.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Dicky laughed and threw down his papers. “The <i>vino blanco</i> stage is past. It has served its turn. Perhaps, after all, there was less entered my mouth and more my ears than people thought. But, there will be no more maps or frowns tonight. I promise you that. Come.”</p>
|
||||
<p>They sat upon a reed <i>silleta</i> at the window and watched the quivering gleams from the lights of the <i>Catarina</i> reflected in the harbour.</p>
|
||||
<p>Presently Pasa rippled out one of her infrequent chirrups of audible laughter.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I was thinking,” she began, anticipating Dicky’s question, “of the foolish things girls have in their minds. Because I went to school in the States I used to have ambitions. Nothing less than to be the president’s wife would satisfy me. And, look, thou red picaroon, to what obscure fate thou hast stolen me!”</p>
|
||||
|
@ -11,7 +11,7 @@
|
||||
<h3>ROUGE ET NOIR<br/> </h3>
|
||||
<p>It has been indicated that disaffection followed the elevation of Losada to the presidency. This feeling continued to grow. Throughout the entire republic there seemed to be a spirit of silent, sullen discontent. Even the old Liberal party to which Goodwin, Zavalla and other patriots had lent their aid was disappointed. Losada had failed to become a popular idol. Fresh taxes, fresh import duties and, more than all, his tolerance of the outrageous oppression of citizens by the military had rendered him the most obnoxious president since the despicable Alforan. The majority of his own cabinet were out of sympathy with him. The army, which he had courted by giving it license to tyrannize, had been his main, and thus far adequate support.</p>
|
||||
<p>But the most impolitic of the administration’s moves had been when it antagonized the Vesuvius Fruit Company, an organization plying twelve steamers and with a cash capital somewhat larger than Anchuria’s surplus and debt combined.</p>
|
||||
<p>Reasonably an established concern like the Vesuvius would become irritated at having a small, retail republic with no rating at all attempt to squeeze it. So when the government proxies applied for a subsidy they encountered a polite refusal. The president at once retaliated by clapping an export duty of one <i>real</i> per bunch on bananas—a thing unprecedented in fruit-growing countries. The Vesuvius Company had invested large sums in wharves and plantations along the Anchurian coast, their agents had erected fine homes in the towns where they had their headquarters, and heretofore had worked with the republic in good-will and with advantage to both. It would lose an immense sum if compelled to move out. The selling price of bananas from Vera Cruz to Trinidad was three <i>reals</i> per bunch. This new duty of one <i>real</i> would have ruined the fruit growers in Anchuria and have seriously discommoded the Vesuvius Company had it declined to pay it. But for some reason, the Vesuvius continued to buy Anchurian fruit, paying four <i>reals</i> for it; and not suffering the growers to bear the loss.</p>
|
||||
<p>Reasonably an established concern like the Vesuvius would become irritated at having a small, retail republic with no rating at all attempt to squeeze it. So when the government proxies applied for a subsidy they encountered a polite refusal. The president at once retaliated by clapping an export duty of one <i>real</i> per bunch on bananas—a thing unprecedented in fruit-growing countries. The Vesuvius Company had invested large sums in wharves and plantations along the Anchurian coast, their agents had erected fine homes in the towns where they had their headquarters, and heretofore had worked with the republic in goodwill and with advantage to both. It would lose an immense sum if compelled to move out. The selling price of bananas from Vera Cruz to Trinidad was three <i>reals</i> per bunch. This new duty of one <i>real</i> would have ruined the fruit growers in Anchuria and have seriously discommoded the Vesuvius Company had it declined to pay it. But for some reason, the Vesuvius continued to buy Anchurian fruit, paying four <i>reals</i> for it; and not suffering the growers to bear the loss.</p>
|
||||
<p>This apparent victory deceived His Excellency; and he began to hunger for more of it. He sent an emissary to request a conference with a representative of the fruit company. The Vesuvius sent <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Franzoni, a little, stout, cheerful man, always cool, and whistling airs from Verdi’s operas. Señor Espirition, of the office of the Minister of Finance, attempted the sandbagging in behalf of Anchuria. The meeting took place in the cabin of the <i>Salvador</i>, of the Vesuvius line.</p>
|
||||
<p>Señor Espirition opened negotiations by announcing that the government contemplated the building of a railroad to skirt the alluvial coast lands. After touching upon the benefits such a road would confer upon the interests of the Vesuvius, he reached the definite suggestion that a contribution to the road’s expenses of, say, fifty thousand <i>pesos</i> would not be more than an equivalent to benefits received.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mr.</abbr> Franzoni denied that his company would receive any benefits from a contemplated road. As its representative he must decline to contribute fifty thousand <i>pesos</i>. But he would assume the responsibility of offering twenty-five.</p>
|
||||
@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
|
||||
<p>This was the state of affairs in Anchuria when the winter season opened at Coralio at the end of the second year of Losada’s administration. So, when the government and society made its annual exodus to the seashore it was evident that the presidential advent would not be celebrated by unlimited rejoicing. The tenth of November was the day set for the entrance into Coralio of the gay company from the capital. A narrow-gauge railroad runs twenty miles into the interior from Solitas. The government party travels by carriage from San Mateo to this road’s terminal point, and proceeds by train to Solitas. From here they march in grand procession to Coralio where, on the day of their coming, festivities and ceremonies abound. But this season saw an ominous dawning of the tenth of November.</p>
|
||||
<p>Although the rainy season was over, the day seemed to hark back to reeking June. A fine drizzle of rain fell all during the forenoon. The procession entered Coralio amid a strange silence.</p>
|
||||
<p>President Losada was an elderly man, grizzly bearded, with a considerable ratio of Indian blood revealed in his cinnamon complexion. His carriage headed the procession, surrounded and guarded by Captain Cruz and his famous troop of one hundred light horse “<i>El Ciento Huilando</i>.” Colonel Rocas followed, with a regiment of the regular army.</p>
|
||||
<p>The president’s sharp, beady eyes glanced about him for the expected demonstration of welcome; but he faced a stolid, indifferent array of citizens. Sight-seers the Anchurians are by birth and habit, and they turned out to their last able-bodied unit to witness the scene; but they maintained an accusive silence. They crowded the streets to the very wheel ruts; they covered the red tile roofs to the eaves, but there was never a “<i>viva</i>” from them. No wreaths of palm and lemon branches or gorgeous strings of paper roses hung from the windows and balconies as was the custom. There was an apathy, a dull, dissenting disapprobation, that was the more ominous because it puzzled. No one feared an outburst, a revolt of the discontents, for they had no leader. The president and those loyal to him had never even heard whispered a name among them capable of crystallizing the dissatisfaction into opposition. No, there could be no danger. The people always procured a new idol before they destroyed an old one.</p>
|
||||
<p>The president’s sharp, beady eyes glanced about him for the expected demonstration of welcome; but he faced a stolid, indifferent array of citizens. Sightseers the Anchurians are by birth and habit, and they turned out to their last able-bodied unit to witness the scene; but they maintained an accusive silence. They crowded the streets to the very wheel ruts; they covered the red tile roofs to the eaves, but there was never a “<i>viva</i>” from them. No wreaths of palm and lemon branches or gorgeous strings of paper roses hung from the windows and balconies as was the custom. There was an apathy, a dull, dissenting disapprobation, that was the more ominous because it puzzled. No one feared an outburst, a revolt of the discontents, for they had no leader. The president and those loyal to him had never even heard whispered a name among them capable of crystallizing the dissatisfaction into opposition. No, there could be no danger. The people always procured a new idol before they destroyed an old one.</p>
|
||||
<p>At length, after a prodigious galloping and curvetting of red-sashed majors, gold-laced colonels and epauletted generals, the procession formed for its annual progress down the Calle Grande to the Casa Morena, where the ceremony of welcome to the visiting president always took place.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Swiss band led the line of march. After it pranced the local <i>comandante</i>, mounted, and a detachment of his troops. Next came a carriage with four members of the cabinet, conspicuous among them the Minister of War, old General Pilar, with his white moustache and his soldierly bearing. Then the president’s vehicle, containing also the Ministers of Finance and State; and surrounded by Captain Cruz’s light horse formed in a close double file of fours. Following them, the rest of the officials of state, the judges and distinguished military and social ornaments of public and private life.</p>
|
||||
<p>As the band struck up, and the movement began, like a bird of ill-omen the <i>Valhalla</i>, the swiftest steamship of the Vesuvius line, glided into the harbour in plain view of the president and his train. Of course, there was nothing menacing about its arrival—a business firm does not go to war with a nation—but it reminded Señor Espirition and others in those carriages that the Vesuvius Fruit Company was undoubtedly carrying something up its sleeve for them.</p>
|
||||
@ -38,7 +38,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“The lad’s game,” said Cronin, with a commending look at the tall, easy figure by the steps. “But ’tis all like fly-by-night theatricals to me. The talk’s bigger than the stage; there’s a smell of gasoline in the air, and they’re their own audience and scene-shifters.”</p>
|
||||
<p>They ceased talking, for General Pilar had descended from the first carriage and had taken his stand upon the top step of Casa Morena. As the oldest member of the cabinet, custom had decreed that he should make the address of welcome, presenting the keys of the official residence to the president at its close.</p>
|
||||
<p>General Pilar was one of the most distinguished citizens of the republic. Hero of three wars and innumerable revolutions, he was an honoured guest at European courts and camps. An eloquent speaker and a friend to the people, he represented the highest type of the Anchurians.</p>
|
||||
<p>Holding in his hand the gilt keys of Casa Morena, he began his address in a historical form, touching upon each administration and the advance of civilization and prosperity from the first dim striving after liberty down to present times. Arriving at the régime of President Losada, at which point, according to precedent, he should have delivered a eulogy upon its wise conduct and the happiness of the people, General Pilar paused. Then he silently held up the bunch of keys high above his head, with his eyes closely regarding it. The ribbon with which they were bound fluttered in the breeze.</p>
|
||||
<p>Holding in his hand the gilt keys of Casa Morena, he began his address in a historical form, touching upon each administration and the advance of civilization and prosperity from the first dim striving after liberty down to present times. Arriving at the regime of President Losada, at which point, according to precedent, he should have delivered a eulogy upon its wise conduct and the happiness of the people, General Pilar paused. Then he silently held up the bunch of keys high above his head, with his eyes closely regarding it. The ribbon with which they were bound fluttered in the breeze.</p>
|
||||
<p>“It still blows,” cried the speaker, exultantly. “Citizens of Anchuria, give thanks to the saints this night that our air is still free.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Thus disposing of Losada’s administration, he abruptly reverted to that of Olivarra, Anchuria’s most popular ruler. Olivarra had been assassinated nine years before while in the prime of life and usefulness. A faction of the Liberal party led by Losada himself had been accused of the deed. Whether guilty or not, it was eight years before the ambitious and scheming Losada had gained his goal.</p>
|
||||
<p>Upon this theme General Pilar’s eloquence was loosed. He drew the picture of the beneficent Olivarra with a loving hand. He reminded the people of the peace, the security and the happiness they had enjoyed during that period. He recalled in vivid detail and with significant contrast the last winter sojourn of President Olivarra in Coralio, when his appearance at their fiestas was the signal for thundering <i>vivas</i> of love and approbation.</p>
|
||||
@ -62,9 +62,9 @@
|
||||
<p>“Good boy!” he exclaimed suddenly, as if relieved. “I wondered if he was going to forget his Kathleen Mavourneen.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Young Olivarra had reascended the steps and spoken a few words to General Pilar. Then that distinguished veteran descended to the ground and approached Pasa, who still stood, wonder-eyed, where Dicky had left her. With his plumed hat in his hand, and his medals and decorations shining on his breast, the general spoke to her and gave her his arm, and they went up the stone steps of the Casa Morena together. And then Ramon Olivarra stepped forward and took both her hands before all the people.</p>
|
||||
<p>And while the cheering was breaking out afresh everywhere, Captain Cronin and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vincenti turned and walked back toward the shore where the gig was waiting for them.</p>
|
||||
<p>“There’ll be another ‘<i>presidente proclamada</i>‘ in the morning,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vincenti, musingly. “As a rule they are not as reliable as the elected ones, but this youngster seems to have some good stuff in him. He planned and manœuvred the entire campaign. Olivarra’s widow, you know, was wealthy. After her husband was assassinated she went to the States, and educated her son at Yale. The Vesuvius Company hunted him up, and backed him in the little game.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“There’ll be another ‘<i>presidente proclamada</i>‘ in the morning,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vincenti, musingly. “As a rule they are not as reliable as the elected ones, but this youngster seems to have some good stuff in him. He planned and maneuvered the entire campaign. Olivarra’s widow, you know, was wealthy. After her husband was assassinated she went to the States, and educated her son at Yale. The Vesuvius Company hunted him up, and backed him in the little game.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“It’s a glorious thing,” said Cronin, half jestingly, “to be able to discharge a government, and insert one of your own choosing, in these days.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, it is only a matter of business,” said Vincenti, stopping and offering the stump of his cigar to a monkey that swung down from a lime tree; “and that is what moves the world of to-day. That extra <i>real</i> on the price of bananas had to go. We took the shortest way of removing it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, it is only a matter of business,” said Vincenti, stopping and offering the stump of his cigar to a monkey that swung down from a lime tree; “and that is what moves the world of today. That extra <i>real</i> on the price of bananas had to go. We took the shortest way of removing it.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
@ -10,10 +10,10 @@
|
||||
<h2>XVII</h2>
|
||||
<h3>TWO RECALLS<br/> </h3>
|
||||
<p>There remains three duties to be performed before the curtain falls upon the patched comedy. Two have been promised: the third is no less obligatory.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was set forth in the programme of this tropic vaudeville that it would be made known why Shorty O’Day, of the Columbia Detective Agency, lost his position. Also that Smith should come again to tell us what mystery he followed that night on the shores of Anchuria when he strewed so many cigar stumps around the cocoanut palm during his lonely night vigil on the beach. These things were promised; but a bigger thing yet remains to be accomplished—the clearing up of a seeming wrong that has been done according to the array of chronicled facts (truthfully set forth) that have been presented. And one voice, speaking, shall do these three things.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was set forth in the programme of this tropic vaudeville that it would be made known why Shorty O’Day, of the Columbia Detective Agency, lost his position. Also that Smith should come again to tell us what mystery he followed that night on the shores of Anchuria when he strewed so many cigar stumps around the coconut palm during his lonely night vigil on the beach. These things were promised; but a bigger thing yet remains to be accomplished—the clearing up of a seeming wrong that has been done according to the array of chronicled facts (truthfully set forth) that have been presented. And one voice, speaking, shall do these three things.</p>
|
||||
<p>Two men sat on a stringer of a North River pier in the City of New York. A steamer from the tropics had begun to unload bananas and oranges on the pier. Now and then a banana or two would fall from an overripe bunch, and one of the two men would shamble forward, seize the fruit and return to share it with his companion.</p>
|
||||
<p>One of the men was in the ultimate stage of deterioration. As far as rain and wind and sun could wreck the garments he wore, it had been done. In his person the ravages of drink were as plainly visible. And yet, upon his high-bridged, rubicund nose was jauntily perched a pair of shining and flawless gold-rimmed glasses.</p>
|
||||
<p>The other man was not so far gone upon the descending Highway of the Incompetents. Truly, the flower of his manhood had gone to seed—seed that, perhaps, no soil might sprout. But there were still cross-cuts along where he travelled through which he might yet regain the pathway of usefulness without disturbing the slumbering Miracles. This man was short and compactly built. He had an oblique, dead eye, like that of a sting-ray, and the moustache of a cocktail mixer. We know the eye and the moustache; we know that Smith of the luxurious yacht, the gorgeous raiment, the mysterious mission, the magic disappearance, has come again, though shorn of the accessories of his former state.</p>
|
||||
<p>The other man was not so far gone upon the descending Highway of the Incompetents. Truly, the flower of his manhood had gone to seed—seed that, perhaps, no soil might sprout. But there were still crosscuts along where he travelled through which he might yet regain the pathway of usefulness without disturbing the slumbering Miracles. This man was short and compactly built. He had an oblique, dead eye, like that of a stingray, and the moustache of a cocktail mixer. We know the eye and the moustache; we know that Smith of the luxurious yacht, the gorgeous raiment, the mysterious mission, the magic disappearance, has come again, though shorn of the accessories of his former state.</p>
|
||||
<p>At his third banana, the man with the nose glasses spat it from him with a shudder.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Deuce take all fruit!” he remarked, in a patrician tone of disgust. “I lived for two years where these things grow. The memory of their taste lingers with you. The oranges are not so bad. Just see if you can gather a couple of them, O’Day, when the next broken crate comes up.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Did you live down with the monkeys?” asked the other, made tepidly garrulous by the sunshine and the alleviating meal of juicy fruit. “I was down there, once myself. But only for a few hours. That was when I was with the Columbia Detective Agency. The monkey people did me up. I’d have my job yet if it hadn’t been for them. I’ll tell you about it.</p>
|
||||
@ -22,9 +22,9 @@
|
||||
<p>“One of the directors had his steam yacht coaled and with steam up, ready for the trip; and he turned her over to me, cart blongsh. In four hours I was on board of her, and hot on the trail of the fruit tub. I had a pretty good idea where old Wahrfield—that was his name, J. Churchill Wahrfield—would head for. At that time we had a treaty with about every foreign country except Belgium and that banana republic, Anchuria. There wasn’t a photo of old Wahrfield to be had in New York—he had been foxy there—but I had his description. And besides, the lady with him would be a dead-give-away anywhere. She was one of the high-flyers in Society—not the kind that have their pictures in the Sunday papers—but the real sort that open chrysanthemum shows and christen battleships.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, sir, we never got a sight of that fruit tub on the road. The ocean is a pretty big place; and I guess we took different paths across it. But we kept going toward this Anchuria, where the fruiter was bound for.</p>
|
||||
<p>“We struck the monkey coast one afternoon about four. There was a ratty-looking steamer off shore taking on bananas. The monkeys were loading her up with big barges. It might be the one the old man had taken, and it might not. I went ashore to look around. The scenery was pretty good. I never saw any finer on the New York stage. I struck an American on shore, a big, cool chap, standing around with the monkeys. He showed me the consul’s office. The consul was a nice young fellow. He said the fruiter was the <i>Karlsefin</i>, running generally to New Orleans, but took her last cargo to New York. Then I was sure my people were on board, although everybody told me that no passengers had landed. I didn’t think they would land until after dark, for they might have been shy about it on account of seeing that yacht of mine hanging around. So, all I had to do was to wait and nab ’em when they came ashore. I couldn’t arrest old Wahrfield without extradition papers, but my play was to get the cash. They generally give up if you strike ’em when they’re tired and rattled and short on nerve.</p>
|
||||
<p>“After dark I sat under a cocoanut tree on the beach for a while, and then I walked around and investigated that town some, and it was enough to give you the lions. If a man could stay in New York and be honest, he’d better do it than to hit that monkey town with a million.</p>
|
||||
<p>“After dark I sat under a coconut tree on the beach for a while, and then I walked around and investigated that town some, and it was enough to give you the lions. If a man could stay in New York and be honest, he’d better do it than to hit that monkey town with a million.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Dinky little mud houses; grass over your shoe tops in the streets; ladies in low-neck-and-short-sleeves walking around smoking cigars; tree frogs rattling like a hose cart going to a ten blow; big mountains dropping gravel in the back yards, and the sea licking the paint off in front—no, sir—a man had better be in God’s country living on free lunch than there.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The main street ran along the beach, and I walked down it, and then turned up a kind of lane where the houses were made of poles and straw. I wanted to see what the monkeys did when they weren’t climbing cocoanut trees. The very first shack I looked in I saw my people. They must have come ashore while I was promenading. A man about fifty, smooth face, heavy eyebrows, dressed in black broadcloth, looking like he was just about to say, ‘Can any little boy in the Sunday school answer that?’ He was freezing on to a grip that weighed like a dozen gold bricks, and a swell girl—a regular peach, with a Fifth Avenue cut—was sitting on a wooden chair. An old black woman was fixing some coffee and beans on a table. The light they had come from a lantern hung on a nail. I went and stood in the door, and they looked at me, and I said:</p>
|
||||
<p>“The main street ran along the beach, and I walked down it, and then turned up a kind of lane where the houses were made of poles and straw. I wanted to see what the monkeys did when they weren’t climbing coconut trees. The very first shack I looked in I saw my people. They must have come ashore while I was promenading. A man about fifty, smooth face, heavy eyebrows, dressed in black broadcloth, looking like he was just about to say, ‘Can any little boy in the Sunday school answer that?’ He was freezing on to a grip that weighed like a dozen gold bricks, and a swell girl—a regular peach, with a Fifth Avenue cut—was sitting on a wooden chair. An old black woman was fixing some coffee and beans on a table. The light they had come from a lantern hung on a nail. I went and stood in the door, and they looked at me, and I said:</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Wahrfield, you are my prisoner. I hope, for the lady’s sake, you will take the matter sensibly. You know why I want you.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Who are you?’ says the old gent.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘O’Day,’ says I, ‘of the Columbia Detective Agency. And now, sir, let me give you a piece of good advice. You go back and take your medicine like a man. Hand ’em back the boodle; and maybe they’ll let you off light. Go back easy, and I’ll put in a word for you. I’ll give you five minutes to decide.’ I pulled out my watch and waited.</p>
|
||||
@ -47,12 +47,12 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘<abbr>Mr.</abbr> O’Day,’ she says. ‘Oh, take us away from this horrid country at once. Can you! Will you! Say you will.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I’ll try,’ I said, concealing the fact that I was dying to get them on salt water before they could change their mind.</p>
|
||||
<p>“One thing they both kicked against was going through the town to the boat landing. Said they dreaded publicity, and now that they were going to return, they had a hope that the thing might yet be kept out of the papers. They swore they wouldn’t go unless I got them out to the yacht without any one knowing it, so I agreed to humour them.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The sailors who rowed me ashore were playing billiards in a bar-room near the water, waiting for orders, and I proposed to have them take the boat down the beach half a mile or so, and take us up there. How to get them word was the question, for I couldn’t leave the grip with the prisoner, and I couldn’t take it with me, not knowing but what the monkeys might stick me up.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The sailors who rowed me ashore were playing billiards in a barroom near the water, waiting for orders, and I proposed to have them take the boat down the beach half a mile or so, and take us up there. How to get them word was the question, for I couldn’t leave the grip with the prisoner, and I couldn’t take it with me, not knowing but what the monkeys might stick me up.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The young lady says the old coloured woman would take them a note. I sat down and wrote it, and gave it to the dame with plain directions what to do, and she grins like a baboon and shakes her head.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Then <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Wahrfield handed her a string of foreign dialect, and she nods her head and says, ‘See, señor,’ maybe fifty times, and lights out with the note.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Old Augusta only understands German,’ said Miss Wahrfield, smiling at me. ‘We stopped in her house to ask where we could find lodging, and she insisted upon our having coffee. She tells us she was raised in a German family in San Domingo.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Very likely,’ I said. ‘But you can search me for German words, except <i>nix verstay</i> and <i>noch einst</i>. I would have called that “See, señor” French, though, on a gamble.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, we three made a sneak around the edge of town so as not to be seen. We got tangled in vines and ferns and the banana bushes and tropical scenery a good deal. The monkey suburbs was as wild as places in Central Park. We came out on the beach a good half mile below. A brown chap was lying asleep under a cocoanut tree, with a ten-foot musket beside him. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Wahrfield takes up the gun and pitches it into the sea. ‘The coast is guarded,’ he says. ‘Rebellion and plots ripen like fruit.’ He pointed to the sleeping man, who never stirred. ‘Thus,’ he says, ‘they perform trusts. Children!’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, we three made a sneak around the edge of town so as not to be seen. We got tangled in vines and ferns and the banana bushes and tropical scenery a good deal. The monkey suburbs was as wild as places in Central Park. We came out on the beach a good half mile below. A brown chap was lying asleep under a coconut tree, with a ten-foot musket beside him. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Wahrfield takes up the gun and pitches it into the sea. ‘The coast is guarded,’ he says. ‘Rebellion and plots ripen like fruit.’ He pointed to the sleeping man, who never stirred. ‘Thus,’ he says, ‘they perform trusts. Children!’</p>
|
||||
<p>“I saw our boat coming, and I struck a match and lit a piece of newspaper to show them where we were. In thirty minutes we were on board the yacht.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The first thing, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Wahrfield and his daughter and I took the grip into the owner’s cabin, opened it up, and took an inventory. There was one hundred and five thousand dollars, United States treasury notes, in it, besides a lot of diamond jewelry and a couple of hundred Havana cigars. I gave the old man the cigars and a receipt for the rest of the lot, as agent for the company, and locked the stuff up in my private quarters.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I never had a pleasanter trip than that one. After we got to sea the young lady turned out to be the jolliest ever. The very first time we sat down to dinner, and the steward filled her glass with champagne—that director’s yacht was a regular floating Waldorf-Astoria—she winks at me and says, ‘What’s the use to borrow trouble, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Fly Cop? Here’s hoping you may live to eat the hen that scratches on your grave.’ There was a piano on board, and she sat down to it and sung better than you give up two cases to hear plenty times. She knew about nine operas clear through. She was sure enough <i>bon ton</i> and swell. She wasn’t one of the ‘among others present’ kind; she belonged on the special mention list!</p>
|
||||
|
@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
|
||||
<section id="chapter-18" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h2>XVIII</h2>
|
||||
<h3>THE VITAGRAPHOSCOPE<br/> </h3>
|
||||
<p>Vaudeville is intrinsically episodic and discontinuous. Its audiences do not demand dénoûements. Sufficient unto each “turn” is the evil thereof. No one cares how many romances the singing comédienne may have had if she can capably sustain the limelight and a high note or two. The audiences reck not if the performing dogs get to the pound the moment they have jumped through their last hoop. They do not desire bulletins about the possible injuries received by the comic bicyclist who retires head-first from the stage in a crash of (property) china-ware. Neither do they consider that their seat coupons entitle them to be instructed whether or no there is a sentiment between the lady solo banjoist and the Irish monologist.</p>
|
||||
<p>Vaudeville is intrinsically episodic and discontinuous. Its audiences do not demand dénoûements. Sufficient unto each “turn” is the evil thereof. No one cares how many romances the singing comédienne may have had if she can capably sustain the limelight and a high note or two. The audiences reck not if the performing dogs get to the pound the moment they have jumped through their last hoop. They do not desire bulletins about the possible injuries received by the comic bicyclist who retires headfirst from the stage in a crash of (property) chinaware. Neither do they consider that their seat coupons entitle them to be instructed whether or no there is a sentiment between the lady solo banjoist and the Irish monologist.</p>
|
||||
<p>Therefore let us have no lifting of the curtain upon a tableau of the united lovers, backgrounded by defeated villainy and derogated by the comic, osculating maid and butler, thrown in as a sop to the Cerberi of the fifty-cent seats.</p>
|
||||
<p>But our programme ends with a brief “turn” or two; and then to the exits. Whoever sits the show out may find, if he will, the slender thread that binds together, though ever so slightly, the story that, perhaps, only the Walrus will understand.<br/></p>
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
|
@ -13,16 +13,16 @@
|
||||
<p>“I shall complain to the civil service department,” said Goodwin;—“or is it a department?—perhaps it’s only a theory. One gets neither civility nor service from you. You won’t talk; and you won’t set out anything to drink. What kind of a way is that of representing your government?”</p>
|
||||
<p>Goodwin strolled out and across to the hotel to see if he could bully the quarantine doctor into a game on Coralio’s solitary billiard table. His plans were completed for the interception of the fugitives from the capital; and now it was but a waiting game that he had to play.</p>
|
||||
<p>The consul was interested in his report. He was only twenty-four; and he had not been in Coralio long enough for his enthusiasm to cool in the heat of the tropics—a paradox that may be allowed between Cancer and Capricorn.</p>
|
||||
<p>So many thousand bunches of bananas, so many thousand oranges and cocoanuts, so many ounces of gold dust, pounds of rubber, coffee, indigo and sarsaparilla—actually, exports were twenty per cent. greater than for the previous year!</p>
|
||||
<p>A little thrill of satisfaction ran through the consul. Perhaps, he thought, the State Department, upon reading his introduction, would notice—and then he leaned back in his chair and laughed. He was getting as bad as the others. For the moment he had forgotten that Coralio was an insignificant town in an insignificant republic lying along the by-ways of a second-rate sea. He thought of Gregg, the quarantine doctor, who subscribed for the London <i>Lancet</i>, expecting to find it quoting his reports to the home Board of Health concerning the yellow fever germ. The consul knew that not one in fifty of his acquaintances in the States had ever heard of Coralio. He knew that two men, at any rate, would have to read his report—some underling in the State Department and a compositor in the Public Printing Office. Perhaps the typesticker would note the increase of commerce in Coralio, and speak of it, over the cheese and beer, to a friend.</p>
|
||||
<p>So many thousand bunches of bananas, so many thousand oranges and coconuts, so many ounces of gold dust, pounds of rubber, coffee, indigo and sarsaparilla—actually, exports were twenty percent greater than for the previous year!</p>
|
||||
<p>A little thrill of satisfaction ran through the consul. Perhaps, he thought, the State Department, upon reading his introduction, would notice—and then he leaned back in his chair and laughed. He was getting as bad as the others. For the moment he had forgotten that Coralio was an insignificant town in an insignificant republic lying along the byways of a second-rate sea. He thought of Gregg, the quarantine doctor, who subscribed for the London <i>Lancet</i>, expecting to find it quoting his reports to the home Board of Health concerning the yellow fever germ. The consul knew that not one in fifty of his acquaintances in the States had ever heard of Coralio. He knew that two men, at any rate, would have to read his report—some underling in the State Department and a compositor in the Public Printing Office. Perhaps the typesticker would note the increase of commerce in Coralio, and speak of it, over the cheese and beer, to a friend.</p>
|
||||
<p>He had just written: “Most unaccountable is the supineness of the large exporters in the United States in permitting the French and German houses to practically control the trade interests of this rich and productive country”—when he heard the hoarse notes of a steamer’s siren.</p>
|
||||
<p>Geddie laid down his pen and gathered his Panama hat and umbrella. By the sound he knew it to be the <i>Valhalla</i>, one of the line of fruit vessels plying for the Vesuvius Company. Down to <i>niños</i> of five years, everyone in Coralio could name you each incoming steamer by the note of her siren.</p>
|
||||
<p>The consul sauntered by a roundabout, shaded way to the beach. By reason of long practice he gauged his stroll so accurately that by the time he arrived on the sandy shore the boat of the customs officials was rowing back from the steamer, which had been boarded and inspected according to the laws of Anchuria.</p>
|
||||
<p>There is no harbour at Coralio. Vessels of the draught of the <i>Valhalla</i> must ride at anchor a mile from shore. When they take on fruit it is conveyed on lighters and freighter sloops. At Solitas, where there was a fine harbour, ships of many kinds were to be seen, but in the roadstead off Coralio scarcely any save the fruiters paused. Now and then a tramp coaster, or a mysterious brig from Spain, or a saucy French barque would hang innocently for a few days in the offing. Then the custom-house crew would become doubly vigilant and wary. At night a sloop or two would be making strange trips in and out along the shore; and in the morning the stock of Three-Star Hennessey, wines and drygoods in Coralio would be found vastly increased. It has also been said that the customs officials jingled more silver in the pockets of their red-striped trousers, and that the record books showed no increase in import duties received.</p>
|
||||
<p>There is no harbour at Coralio. Vessels of the draught of the <i>Valhalla</i> must ride at anchor a mile from shore. When they take on fruit it is conveyed on lighters and freighter sloops. At Solitas, where there was a fine harbour, ships of many kinds were to be seen, but in the roadstead off Coralio scarcely any save the fruiters paused. Now and then a tramp coaster, or a mysterious brig from Spain, or a saucy French barque would hang innocently for a few days in the offing. Then the customhouse crew would become doubly vigilant and wary. At night a sloop or two would be making strange trips in and out along the shore; and in the morning the stock of Three-Star Hennessey, wines and drygoods in Coralio would be found vastly increased. It has also been said that the customs officials jingled more silver in the pockets of their red-striped trousers, and that the record books showed no increase in import duties received.</p>
|
||||
<p>The customs boat and the <i>Valhalla</i> gig reached the shore at the same time. When they grounded in the shallow water there was still five yards of rolling surf between them and dry sand. Then half-clothed Caribs dashed into the water, and brought in on their backs the <i>Valhalla’s</i> purser and the little native officials in their cotton undershirts, blue trousers with red stripes, and flapping straw hats.</p>
|
||||
<p>At college Geddie had been a treasure as a first-baseman. He now closed his umbrella, stuck it upright in the sand, and stooped, with his hands resting upon his knees. The purser, burlesquing the pitcher’s contortions, hurled at the consul the heavy roll of newspapers, tied with a string, that the steamer always brought for him. Geddie leaped high and caught the roll with a sounding “thwack.” The loungers on the beach—about a third of the population of the town—laughed and applauded delightedly. Every week they expected to see that roll of papers delivered and received in that same manner, and they were never disappointed. Innovations did not flourish in Coralio.</p>
|
||||
<p>The consul re-hoisted his umbrella and walked back to the consulate.</p>
|
||||
<p>This home of a great nation’s representative was a wooden structure of two rooms, with a native-built gallery of poles, bamboo and nipa palm running on three sides of it. One room was the official apartment, furnished chastely with a flat-top desk, a hammock, and three uncomfortable cane-seated chairs. Engravings of the first and latest president of the country represented hung against the wall. The other room was the consul’s living apartment.</p>
|
||||
<p>This home of a great nation’s representative was a wooden structure of two rooms, with a native-built gallery of poles, bamboo and nipa palm running on three sides of it. One room was the official apartment, furnished chastely with a flattop desk, a hammock, and three uncomfortable cane-seated chairs. Engravings of the first and latest president of the country represented hung against the wall. The other room was the consul’s living apartment.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was eleven o’clock when he returned from the beach, and therefore breakfast time. Chanca, the Carib woman who cooked for him, was just serving the meal on the side of the gallery facing the sea—a spot famous as the coolest in Coralio. The breakfast consisted of shark’s fin soup, stew of land crabs, breadfruit, a boiled iguana steak, aguacates, a freshly cut pineapple, claret and coffee.</p>
|
||||
<p>Geddie took his seat, and unrolled with luxurious laziness his bundle of newspapers. Here in Coralio for two days or longer he would read of goings-on in the world very much as we of the world read those whimsical contributions to inexact science that assume to portray the doings of the Martians. After he had finished with the papers they would be sent on the rounds of the other English-speaking residents of the town.</p>
|
||||
<p>The paper that came first to his hand was one of those bulky mattresses of printed stuff upon which the readers of certain New York journals are supposed to take their Sabbath literary nap. Opening this the consul rested it upon the table, supporting its weight with the aid of the back of a chair. Then he partook of his meal deliberately, turning the leaves from time to time and glancing half idly at the contents.</p>
|
||||
@ -35,26 +35,26 @@
|
||||
<p>Geddie intended to marry Paula—if, of course, she would consent; but he felt rather sure that she would do that. Somehow, he kept postponing his proposal. Several times he had been quite near to it; but a mysterious something always held him back. Perhaps it was only the unconscious, instinctive conviction that the act would sever the last tie that bound him to his old world.</p>
|
||||
<p>He could be very happy with Paula. Few of the native girls could be compared with her. She had attended a convent school in New Orleans for two years; and when she chose to display her accomplishments no one could detect any difference between her and the girls of Norfolk and Manhattan. But it was delicious to see her at home dressed, as she sometimes was, in the native costume, with bare shoulders and flowing sleeves.</p>
|
||||
<p>Bernard Brannigan was the great merchant of Coralio. Besides his store, he maintained a train of pack mules, and carried on a lively trade with the interior towns and villages. He had married a native lady of high Castilian descent, but with a tinge of Indian brown showing through her olive cheek. The union of the Irish and the Spanish had produced, as it so often has, an offshoot of rare beauty and variety. They were very excellent people indeed, and the upper story of their house was ready to be placed at the service of Geddie and Paula as soon as he should make up his mind to speak about it.</p>
|
||||
<p>By the time two hours were whiled away the consul tired of reading. The papers lay scattered about him on the gallery. Reclining there, he gazed dreamily out upon an Eden. A clump of banana plants interposed their broad shields between him and the sun. The gentle slope from the consulate to the sea was covered with the dark-green foliage of lemon-trees and orange-trees just bursting into bloom. A lagoon pierced the land like a dark, jagged crystal, and above it a pale ceiba-tree rose almost to the clouds. The waving cocoanut palms on the beach flared their decorative green leaves against the slate of an almost quiescent sea. His senses were cognizant of brilliant scarlet and ochres amid the vert of the coppice, of odours of fruit and bloom and the smoke from Chanca’s clay oven under the calabash-tree; of the treble laughter of the native women in their huts, the song of the robin, the salt taste of the breeze, the diminuendo of the faint surf running along the shore—and, gradually, of a white speck, growing to a blur, that intruded itself upon the drab prospect of the sea.</p>
|
||||
<p>By the time two hours were whiled away the consul tired of reading. The papers lay scattered about him on the gallery. Reclining there, he gazed dreamily out upon an Eden. A clump of banana plants interposed their broad shields between him and the sun. The gentle slope from the consulate to the sea was covered with the dark-green foliage of lemon-trees and orange-trees just bursting into bloom. A lagoon pierced the land like a dark, jagged crystal, and above it a pale ceiba-tree rose almost to the clouds. The waving coconut palms on the beach flared their decorative green leaves against the slate of an almost quiescent sea. His senses were cognizant of brilliant scarlet and ochres amid the vert of the coppice, of odours of fruit and bloom and the smoke from Chanca’s clay oven under the calabash-tree; of the treble laughter of the native women in their huts, the song of the robin, the salt taste of the breeze, the diminuendo of the faint surf running along the shore—and, gradually, of a white speck, growing to a blur, that intruded itself upon the drab prospect of the sea.</p>
|
||||
<p>Lazily interested, he watched this blur increase until it became the <i>Idalia</i> steaming at full speed, coming down the coast. Without changing his position he kept his eyes upon the beautiful white yacht as she drew swiftly near, and came opposite to Coralio. Then, sitting upright, he saw her float steadily past and on. Scarcely a mile of sea had separated her from the shore. He had seen the frequent flash of her polished brass work and the stripes of her deck-awnings—so much, and no more. Like a ship on a magic lantern slide the <i>Idalia</i> had crossed the illuminated circle of the consul’s little world, and was gone. Save for the tiny cloud of smoke that was left hanging over the brim of the sea, she might have been an immaterial thing, a chimera of his idle brain.</p>
|
||||
<p>Geddie went into his office and sat down to dawdle over his report. If the reading of the article in the paper had left him unshaken, this silent passing of the <i>Idalia</i> had done for him still more. It had brought the calm and peace of a situation from which all uncertainty had been erased. He knew that men sometimes hope without being aware of it. Now, since she had come two thousand miles and had passed without a sign, not even his unconscious self need cling to the past any longer.</p>
|
||||
<p>After dinner, when the sun was low behind the mountains, Geddie walked on the little strip of beach under the cocoanuts. The wind was blowing mildly landward, and the surface of the sea was rippled by tiny wavelets.</p>
|
||||
<p>After dinner, when the sun was low behind the mountains, Geddie walked on the little strip of beach under the coconuts. The wind was blowing mildly landward, and the surface of the sea was rippled by tiny wavelets.</p>
|
||||
<p>A miniature breaker, spreading with a soft “swish” upon the sand brought with it something round and shiny that rolled back again as the wave receded. The next influx beached it clear, and Geddie picked it up. The thing was a long-necked wine bottle of colourless glass. The cork had been driven in tightly to the level of the mouth, and the end covered with dark-red sealing-wax. The bottle contained only what seemed to be a sheet of paper, much curled from the manipulation it had undergone while being inserted. In the sealing-wax was the impression of a seal—probably of a signet-ring, bearing the initials of a monogram; but the impression had been hastily made, and the letters were past anything more certain than a shrewd conjecture. Ida Payne had always worn a signet-ring in preference to any other finger decoration. Geddie thought he could make out the familiar “I P”; and a queer sensation of disquietude went over him. More personal and intimate was this reminder of her than had been the sight of the vessel she was doubtless on. He walked back to his house, and set the bottle on his desk.</p>
|
||||
<p>Throwing off his hat and coat, and lighting a lamp—for the night had crowded precipitately upon the brief twilight—he began to examine his piece of sea salvage.</p>
|
||||
<p>By holding the bottle near the light and turning it judiciously, he made out that it contained a double sheet of note-paper filled with close writing; further, that the paper was of the same size and shade as that always used by Ida; and that, to the best of his belief, the handwriting was hers. The imperfect glass of the bottle so distorted the rays of light that he could read no word of the writing; but certain capital letters, of which he caught comprehensive glimpses, were Ida’s, he felt sure.</p>
|
||||
<p>By holding the bottle near the light and turning it judiciously, he made out that it contained a double sheet of notepaper filled with close writing; further, that the paper was of the same size and shade as that always used by Ida; and that, to the best of his belief, the handwriting was hers. The imperfect glass of the bottle so distorted the rays of light that he could read no word of the writing; but certain capital letters, of which he caught comprehensive glimpses, were Ida’s, he felt sure.</p>
|
||||
<p>There was a little smile both of perplexity and amusement in Geddie’s eyes as he set the bottle down, and laid three cigars side by side on his desk. He fetched his steamer chair from the gallery, and stretched himself comfortably. He would smoke those three cigars while considering the problem.</p>
|
||||
<p>For it amounted to a problem. He almost wished that he had not found the bottle; but the bottle was there. Why should it have drifted in from the sea, whence come so many disquieting things, to disturb his peace?</p>
|
||||
<p>In this dreamy land, where time seemed so redundant, he had fallen into the habit of bestowing much thought upon even trifling matters.</p>
|
||||
<p>He began to speculate upon many fanciful theories concerning the story of the bottle, rejecting each in turn.</p>
|
||||
<p>Ships in danger of wreck or disablement sometimes cast forth such precarious messengers calling for aid. But he had seen the <i>Idalia</i> not three hours before, safe and speeding. Suppose the crew had mutinied and imprisoned the passengers below, and the message was one begging for succour! But, premising such an improbable outrage, would the agitated captives have taken the pains to fill four pages of note-paper with carefully penned arguments to their rescue.</p>
|
||||
<p>Ships in danger of wreck or disablement sometimes cast forth such precarious messengers calling for aid. But he had seen the <i>Idalia</i> not three hours before, safe and speeding. Suppose the crew had mutinied and imprisoned the passengers below, and the message was one begging for succour! But, premising such an improbable outrage, would the agitated captives have taken the pains to fill four pages of notepaper with carefully penned arguments to their rescue.</p>
|
||||
<p>Thus by elimination he soon rid the matter of the more unlikely theories, and was reduced—though aversely—to the less assailable one that the bottle contained a message to himself. Ida knew he was in Coralio; she must have launched the bottle while the yacht was passing and the wind blowing fairly toward the shore.</p>
|
||||
<p>As soon as Geddie reached this conclusion a wrinkle came between his brows and a stubborn look settled around his mouth. He sat looking out through the doorway at the gigantic fire-flies traversing the quiet streets.</p>
|
||||
<p>As soon as Geddie reached this conclusion a wrinkle came between his brows and a stubborn look settled around his mouth. He sat looking out through the doorway at the gigantic fireflies traversing the quiet streets.</p>
|
||||
<p>If this was a message to him from Ida, what could it mean save an overture toward a reconciliation? And if that, why had she not used the same methods of the post instead of this uncertain and even flippant means of communication? A note in an empty bottle, cast into the sea! There was something light and frivolous about it, if not actually contemptuous.</p>
|
||||
<p>The thought stirred his pride and subdued whatever emotions had been resurrected by the finding of the bottle.</p>
|
||||
<p>Geddie put on his coat and hat and walked out. He followed a street that led him along the border of the little plaza where a band was playing and people were rambling, care-free and indolent. Some timorous <i>señoritas</i> scurrying past with fire-flies tangled in the jetty braids of their hair glanced at him with shy, flattering eyes. The air was languorous with the scent of jasmin and orange-blossoms.</p>
|
||||
<p>Geddie put on his coat and hat and walked out. He followed a street that led him along the border of the little plaza where a band was playing and people were rambling, carefree and indolent. Some timorous <i>señoritas</i> scurrying past with fireflies tangled in the jetty braids of their hair glanced at him with shy, flattering eyes. The air was languorous with the scent of jasmin and orange-blossoms.</p>
|
||||
<p>The consul stayed his steps at the house of Bernard Brannigan. Paula was swinging in a hammock on the gallery. She rose from it like a bird from its nest. The colour came to her cheek at the sound of Geddie’s voice.</p>
|
||||
<p>He was charmed at the sight of her costume—a flounced muslin dress, with a little jacket of white flannel, all made with neatness and style. He suggested a stroll, and they walked out to the old Indian well on the hill road. They sat on the curb, and there Geddie made the expected but long-deferred speech. Certain though he had been that she would not say him nay, he was thrilled with joy at the completeness and sweetness of her surrender. Here was surely a heart made for love and steadfastness. Here was no caprice or questionings or captious standards of convention.</p>
|
||||
<p>When Geddie kissed Paula at her door that night he was happier than he had ever been before. “Here in this hollow lotus land, ever to live and lie reclined” seemed to him, as it has seemed to many mariners, the best as well as the easiest. His future would be an ideal one. He had attained a Paradise without a serpent. His Eve would be indeed a part of him, unbeguiled, and therefore more beguiling. He had made his decision to-night, and his heart was full of serene, assured content.</p>
|
||||
<p>When Geddie kissed Paula at her door that night he was happier than he had ever been before. “Here in this hollow lotus land, ever to live and lie reclined” seemed to him, as it has seemed to many mariners, the best as well as the easiest. His future would be an ideal one. He had attained a Paradise without a serpent. His Eve would be indeed a part of him, unbeguiled, and therefore more beguiling. He had made his decision tonight, and his heart was full of serene, assured content.</p>
|
||||
<p>Geddie went back to his house whistling that finest and saddest love song, “La Golondrina.” At the door his tame monkey leaped down from his shelf, chattering briskly. The consul turned to his desk to get him some nuts he usually kept there. Reaching in the half-darkness, his hand struck against the bottle. He started as if he had touched the cold rotundity of a serpent.</p>
|
||||
<p>He had forgotten that the bottle was there.</p>
|
||||
<p>He lighted the lamp and fed the monkey. Then, very deliberately, he lighted a cigar, and took the bottle in his hand, and walked down the path to the beach.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -11,43 +11,43 @@
|
||||
<h3>SMITH<br/> </h3>
|
||||
<p>Goodwin and the ardent patriot, Zavalla, took all the precautions that their foresight could contrive to prevent the escape of President Miraflores and his companion. They sent trusted messengers up the coast to Solitas and Alazan to warn the local leaders of the flight, and to instruct them to patrol the water line and arrest the fugitives at all hazards should they reveal themselves in that territory. After this was done there remained only to cover the district about Coralio and await the coming of the quarry. The nets were well spread. The roads were so few, the opportunities for embarkation so limited, and the two or three probable points of exit so well guarded that it would be strange indeed if there should slip through the meshes so much of the country’s dignity, romance, and collateral. The president would, without doubt, move as secretly as possible, and endeavour to board a vessel by stealth from some secluded point along the shore.</p>
|
||||
<p>On the fourth day after the receipt of Englehart’s telegram the <i>Karlsefin</i>, a Norwegian steamer chartered by the New Orleans fruit trade, anchored off Coralio with three hoarse toots of her siren. The <i>Karlsefin</i> was not one of the line operated by the Vesuvius Fruit Company. She was something of a dilettante, doing odd jobs for a company that was scarcely important enough to figure as a rival to the Vesuvius. The movements of the <i>Karlsefin</i> were dependent upon the state of the market. Sometimes she would ply steadily between the Spanish Main and New Orleans in the regular transport of fruit; next she would be making erratic trips to Mobile or Charleston, or even as far north as New York, according to the distribution of the fruit supply.</p>
|
||||
<p>Goodwin lounged upon the beach with the usual crowd of idlers that had gathered to view the steamer. Now that President Miraflores might be expected to reach the borders of his abjured country at any time, the orders were to keep a strict and unrelenting watch. Every vessel that approached the shores might now be considered a possible means of escape for the fugitives; and an eye was kept even on the sloops and dories that belonged to the sea-going contingent of Coralio. Goodwin and Zavalla moved everywhere, but without ostentation, watching the loopholes of escape.</p>
|
||||
<p>The customs officials crowded importantly into their boat and rowed out to the <i>Karlsefin</i>. A boat from the steamer landed her purser with his papers, and took out the quarantine doctor with his green umbrella and clinical thermometer. Next a swarm of Caribs began to load upon lighters the thousands of bunches of bananas heaped upon the shore and row them out to the steamer. The <i>Karlsefin</i> had no passenger list, and was soon done with the attention of the authorities. The purser declared that the steamer would remain at anchor until morning, taking on her fruit during the night. The <i>Karlsefin</i> had come, he said, from New York, to which port her latest load of oranges and cocoanuts had been conveyed. Two or three of the freighter sloops were engaged to assist in the work, for the captain was anxious to make a quick return in order to reap the advantage offered by a certain dearth of fruit in the States.</p>
|
||||
<p>About four o’clock in the afternoon another of those marine monsters, not very familiar in those waters, hove in sight, following the fateful <i>Idalia</i>—a graceful steam yacht, painted a light buff, clean-cut as a steel engraving. The beautiful vessel hovered off shore, see-sawing the waves as lightly as a duck in a rain barrel. A swift boat manned by a crew in uniform came ashore, and a stocky-built man leaped to the sands.</p>
|
||||
<p>The new-comer seemed to turn a disapproving eye upon the rather motley congregation of native Anchurians, and made his way at once toward Goodwin, who was the most conspicuously Anglo-Saxon figure present. Goodwin greeted him with courtesy.</p>
|
||||
<p>Goodwin lounged upon the beach with the usual crowd of idlers that had gathered to view the steamer. Now that President Miraflores might be expected to reach the borders of his abjured country at any time, the orders were to keep a strict and unrelenting watch. Every vessel that approached the shores might now be considered a possible means of escape for the fugitives; and an eye was kept even on the sloops and dories that belonged to the seagoing contingent of Coralio. Goodwin and Zavalla moved everywhere, but without ostentation, watching the loopholes of escape.</p>
|
||||
<p>The customs officials crowded importantly into their boat and rowed out to the <i>Karlsefin</i>. A boat from the steamer landed her purser with his papers, and took out the quarantine doctor with his green umbrella and clinical thermometer. Next a swarm of Caribs began to load upon lighters the thousands of bunches of bananas heaped upon the shore and row them out to the steamer. The <i>Karlsefin</i> had no passenger list, and was soon done with the attention of the authorities. The purser declared that the steamer would remain at anchor until morning, taking on her fruit during the night. The <i>Karlsefin</i> had come, he said, from New York, to which port her latest load of oranges and coconuts had been conveyed. Two or three of the freighter sloops were engaged to assist in the work, for the captain was anxious to make a quick return in order to reap the advantage offered by a certain dearth of fruit in the States.</p>
|
||||
<p>About four o’clock in the afternoon another of those marine monsters, not very familiar in those waters, hove in sight, following the fateful <i>Idalia</i>—a graceful steam yacht, painted a light buff, clean-cut as a steel engraving. The beautiful vessel hovered off shore, seesawing the waves as lightly as a duck in a rain barrel. A swift boat manned by a crew in uniform came ashore, and a stocky-built man leaped to the sands.</p>
|
||||
<p>The newcomer seemed to turn a disapproving eye upon the rather motley congregation of native Anchurians, and made his way at once toward Goodwin, who was the most conspicuously Anglo-Saxon figure present. Goodwin greeted him with courtesy.</p>
|
||||
<p>Conversation developed that the newly landed one was named Smith, and that he had come in a yacht. A meagre biography, truly; for the yacht was most apparent; and the “Smith” not beyond a reasonable guess before the revelation. Yet to the eye of Goodwin, who had seen several things, there was a discrepancy between Smith and his yacht. A bullet-headed man Smith was, with an oblique, dead eye and the moustache of a cocktail-mixer. And unless he had shifted costumes before putting off for shore he had affronted the deck of his correct vessel clad in a pearl-gray derby, a gay plaid suit and vaudeville neckwear. Men owning pleasure yachts generally harmonize better with them.</p>
|
||||
<p>Smith looked business, but he was no advertiser. He commented upon the scenery, remarking upon its fidelity to the pictures in the geography; and then inquired for the United States consul. Goodwin pointed out the starred-and-striped bunting hanging above the little consulate, which was concealed behind the orange-trees.</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Geddie, the consul, will be sure to be there,” said Goodwin. “He was very nearly drowned a few days ago while taking a swim in the sea, and the doctor has ordered him to remain indoors for some time.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Smith plowed his way through the sand to the consulate, his haberdashery creating violent discord against the smooth tropical blues and greens.</p>
|
||||
<p>Geddie was lounging in his hammock, somewhat pale of face and languid in pose. On that night when the <i>Valhalla’s</i> boat had brought him ashore apparently drenched to death by the sea, Doctor Gregg and his other friends had toiled for hours to preserve the little spark of life that remained to him. The bottle, with its impotent message, was gone out to sea, and the problem that it had provoked was reduced to a simple sum in addition—one and one make two, by the rule of arithmetic; one by the rule of romance.</p>
|
||||
<p>There is a quaint old theory that man may have two souls—a peripheral one which serves ordinarily, and a central one which is stirred only at certain times, but then with activity and vigour. While under the domination of the former a man will shave, vote, pay taxes, give money to his family, buy subscription books and comport himself on the average plan. But let the central soul suddenly become dominant, and he may, in the twinkling of an eye, turn upon the partner of his joys with furious execration; he may change his politics while you could snap your fingers; he may deal out deadly insult to his dearest friend; he may get him, instanter, to a monastery or a dance hall; he may elope, or hang himself—or he may write a song or poem, or kiss his wife unasked, or give his funds to the search of a microbe. Then the peripheral soul will return; and we have our safe, sane citizen again. It is but the revolt of the Ego against Order; and its effect is to shake up the atoms only that they may settle where they belong.</p>
|
||||
<p>Geddie’s revulsion had been a mild one—no more than a swim in a summer sea after so inglorious an object as a drifting bottle. And now he was himself again. Upon his desk, ready for the post, was a letter to his government tendering his resignation as consul, to be effective as soon as another could be appointed in his place. For Bernard Brannigan, who never did things in a half-way manner, was to take Geddie at once for a partner in his very profitable and various enterprises; and Paula was happily engaged in plans for refurnishing and decorating the upper story of the Brannigan house.</p>
|
||||
<p>Geddie’s revulsion had been a mild one—no more than a swim in a summer sea after so inglorious an object as a drifting bottle. And now he was himself again. Upon his desk, ready for the post, was a letter to his government tendering his resignation as consul, to be effective as soon as another could be appointed in his place. For Bernard Brannigan, who never did things in a halfway manner, was to take Geddie at once for a partner in his very profitable and various enterprises; and Paula was happily engaged in plans for refurnishing and decorating the upper story of the Brannigan house.</p>
|
||||
<p>The consul rose from his hammock when he saw the conspicuous stranger in his door.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Keep your seat, old man,” said the visitor, with an airy wave of his large hand. “My name’s Smith; and I’ve come in a yacht. You are the consul—is that right? A big, cool guy on the beach directed me here. Thought I’d pay my respects to the flag.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sit down,” said Geddie. “I’ve been admiring your craft ever since it came in sight. Looks like a fast sailer. What’s her tonnage?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Search me!” said Smith. “I don’t know what she weighs in at. But she’s got a tidy gait. The <i>Rambler</i>—that’s her name—don’t take the dust of anything afloat. This is my first trip on her. I’m taking a squint along this coast just to get an idea of the countries where the rubber and red pepper and revolutions come from. I had no idea there was so much scenery down here. Why, Central Park ain’t in it with this neck of the woods. I’m from New York. They get monkeys, and cocoanuts, and parrots down here—is that right?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Search me!” said Smith. “I don’t know what she weighs in at. But she’s got a tidy gait. The <i>Rambler</i>—that’s her name—don’t take the dust of anything afloat. This is my first trip on her. I’m taking a squint along this coast just to get an idea of the countries where the rubber and red pepper and revolutions come from. I had no idea there was so much scenery down here. Why, Central Park ain’t in it with this neck of the woods. I’m from New York. They get monkeys, and coconuts, and parrots down here—is that right?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“We have them all,” said Geddie. “I’m quite sure that our fauna and flora would take a prize over Central Park.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Maybe they would,” admitted Smith, cheerfully. “I haven’t seen them yet. But I guess you’ve got us skinned on the animal and vegetation question. You don’t have much travel here, do you?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Travel?” queried the consul. “I suppose you mean passengers on the steamers. No; very few people land in Coralio. An investor now and then—tourists and sight-seers generally go further down the coast to one of the larger towns where there is a harbour.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Travel?” queried the consul. “I suppose you mean passengers on the steamers. No; very few people land in Coralio. An investor now and then—tourists and sightseers generally go further down the coast to one of the larger towns where there is a harbour.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I see a ship out there loading up with bananas,” said Smith. “Any passengers come on her?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“That’s the <i>Karlsefin</i>,” said the consul. “She’s a tramp fruiter—made her last trip to New York, I believe. No; she brought no passengers. I saw her boat come ashore, and there was no one. About the only exciting recreation we have here is watching steamers when they arrive; and a passenger on one of them generally causes the whole town to turn out. If you are going to remain in Coralio a while, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Smith, I’ll be glad to take you around to meet some people. There are four or five American chaps that are good to know, besides the native high-fliers.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“That’s the <i>Karlsefin</i>,” said the consul. “She’s a tramp fruiter—made her last trip to New York, I believe. No; she brought no passengers. I saw her boat come ashore, and there was no one. About the only exciting recreation we have here is watching steamers when they arrive; and a passenger on one of them generally causes the whole town to turn out. If you are going to remain in Coralio a while, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Smith, I’ll be glad to take you around to meet some people. There are four or five American chaps that are good to know, besides the native highfliers.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Thanks,” said the yachtsman, “but I wouldn’t put you to the trouble. I’d like to meet the guys you speak of, but I won’t be here long enough to do much knocking around. That cool gent on the beach spoke of a doctor; can you tell me where I could find him? The <i>Rambler</i> ain’t quite as steady on her feet as a Broadway hotel; and a fellow gets a touch of seasickness now and then. Thought I’d strike the croaker for a handful of the little sugar pills, in case I need ’em.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You will be apt to find <abbr>Dr.</abbr> Gregg at the hotel,” said the consul. “You can see it from the door—it’s that two-story building with the balcony, where the orange-trees are.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The Hotel de los Estranjeros was a dreary hostelry, in great disuse both by strangers and friends. It stood at a corner of the Street of the Holy Sepulchre. A grove of small orange-trees crowded against one side of it, enclosed by a low, rock wall over which a tall man might easily step. The house was of plastered adobe, stained a hundred shades of colour by the salt breeze and the sun. Upon its upper balcony opened a central door and two windows containing broad jalousies instead of sashes.</p>
|
||||
<p>The lower floor communicated by two doorways with the narrow, rock-paved sidewalk. The <i>pulperia</i>—or drinking shop—of the proprietress, Madama Timotea Ortiz, occupied the ground floor. On the bottles of brandy, <i>anisada</i>, Scotch “smoke” and inexpensive wines behind the little counter the dust lay thick save where the fingers of infrequent customers had left irregular prints. The upper story contained four or five guest-rooms which were rarely put to their destined use. Sometimes a fruit-grower, riding in from his plantation to confer with his agent, would pass a melancholy night in the dismal upper story; sometimes a minor native official on some trifling government quest would have his pomp and majesty awed by Madama’s sepulchral hospitality. But Madama sat behind her bar content, not desiring to quarrel with Fate. If anyone required meat, drink or lodging at the Hotel de los Estranjeros they had but to come, and be served. <i>Está bueno.</i> If they came not, why, then, they came not. <i>Está bueno.</i></p>
|
||||
<p>The lower floor communicated by two doorways with the narrow, rock-paved sidewalk. The <i>pulperia</i>—or drinking shop—of the proprietress, Madama Timotea Ortiz, occupied the ground floor. On the bottles of brandy, <i>anisada</i>, Scotch “smoke” and inexpensive wines behind the little counter the dust lay thick save where the fingers of infrequent customers had left irregular prints. The upper story contained four or five guestrooms which were rarely put to their destined use. Sometimes a fruit-grower, riding in from his plantation to confer with his agent, would pass a melancholy night in the dismal upper story; sometimes a minor native official on some trifling government quest would have his pomp and majesty awed by Madama’s sepulchral hospitality. But Madama sat behind her bar content, not desiring to quarrel with Fate. If anyone required meat, drink or lodging at the Hotel de los Estranjeros they had but to come, and be served. <i>Está bueno.</i> If they came not, why, then, they came not. <i>Está bueno.</i></p>
|
||||
<p>As the exceptional yachtsman was making his way down the precarious sidewalk of the Street of the Holy Sepulchre, the solitary permanent guest of that decaying hotel sat at its door, enjoying the breeze from the sea.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Dr.</abbr> Gregg, the quarantine physician, was a man of fifty or sixty, with a florid face and the longest beard between Topeka and Terra del Fuego. He held his position by virtue of an appointment by the Board of Health of a seaport city in one of the Southern states. That city feared the ancient enemy of every Southern seaport—the yellow fever—and it was the duty of <abbr>Dr.</abbr> Gregg to examine crew and passengers of every vessel leaving Coralio for preliminary symptoms. The duties were light, and the salary, for one who lived in Coralio, ample. Surplus time there was in plenty; and the good doctor added to his gains by a large private practice among the residents of the coast. The fact that he did not know ten words of Spanish was no obstacle; a pulse could be felt and a fee collected without one being a linguist. Add to the description the facts that the doctor had a story to tell concerning the operation of trepanning which no listener had ever allowed him to conclude, and that he believed in brandy as a prophylactic; and the special points of interest possessed by <abbr>Dr.</abbr> Gregg will have become exhausted.</p>
|
||||
<p>The doctor had dragged a chair to the sidewalk. He was coatless, and he leaned back against the wall and smoked, while he stroked his beard. Surprise came into his pale blue eyes when he caught sight of Smith in his unusual and prismatic clothes.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You’re <abbr>Dr.</abbr> Gregg—is that right?” said Smith, feeling the dog’s head pin in his tie. “The constable—I mean the consul, told me you hung out at this caravansary. My name’s Smith; and I came in a yacht. Taking a cruise around, looking at the monkeys and pineapple-trees. Come inside and have a drink, Doc. This café looks on the blink, but I guess it can set out something wet.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I will join you, sir, in just a taste of brandy,” said <abbr>Dr.</abbr> Gregg, rising quickly. “I find that as a prophylactic a little brandy is almost a necessity in this climate.”</p>
|
||||
<p>As they turned to enter the <i>pulperia</i> a native man, barefoot, glided noiselessly up and addressed the doctor in Spanish. He was yellowish-brown, like an over-ripe lemon; he wore a cotton shirt and ragged linen trousers girded by a leather belt. His face was like an animal’s, live and wary, but without promise of much intelligence. This man jabbered with animation and so much seriousness that it seemed a pity that his words were to be wasted.</p>
|
||||
<p>As they turned to enter the <i>pulperia</i> a native man, barefoot, glided noiselessly up and addressed the doctor in Spanish. He was yellowish-brown, like an overripe lemon; he wore a cotton shirt and ragged linen trousers girded by a leather belt. His face was like an animal’s, live and wary, but without promise of much intelligence. This man jabbered with animation and so much seriousness that it seemed a pity that his words were to be wasted.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Dr.</abbr> Gregg felt his pulse.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You sick?” he inquired.</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i>Mi mujer está enferma en la casa</i>,” said the man, thus endeavouring to convey the news, in the only language open to him, that his wife lay ill in her palm-thatched hut.</p>
|
||||
<p>The doctor drew a handful of capsules filled with a white powder from his trousers pocket. He counted out ten of them into the native’s hand, and held up his forefinger impressively.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Take one,” said the doctor, “every two hours.” He then held up two fingers, shaking them emphatically before the native’s face. Next he pulled out his watch and ran his finger round its dial twice. Again the two fingers confronted the patient’s nose. “Two—two—two hours,” repeated the doctor.</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i>Si, Señor</i>,” said the native, sadly.</p>
|
||||
<p>He pulled a cheap silver watch from his own pocket and laid it in the doctor’s hand. “Me bring,” said he, struggling painfully with his scant English, “other watchy to-morrow.” Then he departed downheartedly with his capsules.</p>
|
||||
<p>He pulled a cheap silver watch from his own pocket and laid it in the doctor’s hand. “Me bring,” said he, struggling painfully with his scant English, “other watchy tomorrow.” Then he departed downheartedly with his capsules.</p>
|
||||
<p>“A very ignorant race of people, sir,” said the doctor, as he slipped the watch into his pocket. “He seems to have mistaken my directions for taking the physic for the fee. However, it is all right. He owes me an account, anyway. The chances are that he won’t bring the other watch. You can’t depend on anything they promise you. About that drink, now? How did you come to Coralio, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Smith? I was not aware that any boats except the <i>Karlsefin</i> had arrived for some days.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The two leaned against the deserted bar; and Madama set out a bottle without waiting for the doctor’s order. There was no dust on it.</p>
|
||||
<p>After they had drank twice Smith said:</p>
|
||||
@ -60,14 +60,14 @@
|
||||
<p>“Say, Doc,” he said, solemnly, “I want to hear that story. You’ve got me interested; and I don’t want to miss the rest of it. I know it’s a loola by the way it begins; and I want to tell it at the next meeting of the Barney O’Flynn Association, if you don’t mind. But I’ve got one or two matters to attend to first. If I get ’em attended to in time I’ll come right back and hear you spiel the rest before bedtime—is that right?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“By all means,” said the doctor, “get your business attended to, and then return. I shall wait up for you. You see, one of the most prominent physicians at the consultation diagnosed the trouble as a blood clot; another said it was an abscess, but <span class="nowrap">I—”</span></p>
|
||||
<p>“Don’t tell me now, Doc. Don’t spoil the story. Wait till I come back. I want to hear it as it runs off the reel—is that right?”</p>
|
||||
<p>The mountains reached up their bulky shoulders to receive the level gallop of Apollo’s homing steeds, the day died in the lagoons and in the shadowed banana groves and in the mangrove swamps, where the great blue crabs were beginning to crawl to land for their nightly ramble. And it died, at last, upon the highest peaks. Then the brief twilight, ephemeral as the flight of a moth, came and went; the Southern Cross peeped with its topmost eye above a row of palms, and the fire-flies heralded with their torches the approach of soft-footed night.</p>
|
||||
<p>The mountains reached up their bulky shoulders to receive the level gallop of Apollo’s homing steeds, the day died in the lagoons and in the shadowed banana groves and in the mangrove swamps, where the great blue crabs were beginning to crawl to land for their nightly ramble. And it died, at last, upon the highest peaks. Then the brief twilight, ephemeral as the flight of a moth, came and went; the Southern Cross peeped with its topmost eye above a row of palms, and the fireflies heralded with their torches the approach of soft-footed night.</p>
|
||||
<p>In the offing the <i>Karlsefin</i> swayed at anchor, her lights seeming to penetrate the water to countless fathoms with their shimmering, lanceolate reflections. The Caribs were busy loading her by means of the great lighters heaped full from the piles of fruit ranged upon the shore.</p>
|
||||
<p>On the sandy beach, with his back against a cocoanut-tree and the stubs of many cigars lying around him, Smith sat waiting, never relaxing his sharp gaze in the direction of the steamer.</p>
|
||||
<p>The incongruous yachtsman had concentrated his interest upon the innocent fruiter. Twice had he been assured that no passengers had come to Coralio on board of her. And yet, with a persistence not to be attributed to an idling voyager, he had appealed the case to the higher court of his own eyesight. Surprisingly like some gay-coated lizard, he crouched at the foot of the cocoanut palm, and with the beady, shifting eyes of the selfsame reptile, sustained his espionage on the <i>Karlsefin</i>.</p>
|
||||
<p>On the sandy beach, with his back against a coconut-tree and the stubs of many cigars lying around him, Smith sat waiting, never relaxing his sharp gaze in the direction of the steamer.</p>
|
||||
<p>The incongruous yachtsman had concentrated his interest upon the innocent fruiter. Twice had he been assured that no passengers had come to Coralio on board of her. And yet, with a persistence not to be attributed to an idling voyager, he had appealed the case to the higher court of his own eyesight. Surprisingly like some gay-coated lizard, he crouched at the foot of the coconut palm, and with the beady, shifting eyes of the selfsame reptile, sustained his espionage on the <i>Karlsefin</i>.</p>
|
||||
<p>On the white sands a whiter gig belonging to the yacht was drawn up, guarded by one of the white-ducked crew. Not far away in a <i>pulperia</i> on the shore-following Calle Grande three other sailors swaggered with their cues around Coralio’s solitary billiard-table. The boat lay there as if under orders to be ready for use at any moment. There was in the atmosphere a hint of expectation, of waiting for something to occur, which was foreign to the air of Coralio.</p>
|
||||
<p>Like some passing bird of brilliant plumage, Smith alights on this palmy shore but to preen his wings for an instant and then to fly away upon silent pinions. When morning dawned there was no Smith, no waiting gig, no yacht in the offing. Smith left no intimation of his mission there, no footprints to show where he had followed the trail of his mystery on the sands of Coralio that night. He came; he spake his strange jargon of the asphalt and the cafés; he sat under the cocoanut-tree, and vanished. The next morning Coralio, Smithless, ate its fried plantain and said: “The man of pictured clothing went himself away.” With the <i>siesta</i> the incident passed, yawning, into history.</p>
|
||||
<p>Like some passing bird of brilliant plumage, Smith alights on this palmy shore but to preen his wings for an instant and then to fly away upon silent pinions. When morning dawned there was no Smith, no waiting gig, no yacht in the offing. Smith left no intimation of his mission there, no footprints to show where he had followed the trail of his mystery on the sands of Coralio that night. He came; he spake his strange jargon of the asphalt and the cafés; he sat under the coconut-tree, and vanished. The next morning Coralio, Smithless, ate its fried plantain and said: “The man of pictured clothing went himself away.” With the <i>siesta</i> the incident passed, yawning, into history.</p>
|
||||
<p>So, for a time, must Smith pass behind the scenes of the play. He comes no more to Coralio nor to Doctor Gregg, who sits in vain, wagging his redundant beard, waiting to enrich his derelict audience with his moving tale of trepanning and jealousy.</p>
|
||||
<p>But prosperously to the lucidity of these loose pages, Smith shall flutter among them again. In the nick of time he shall come to tell us why he strewed so many anxious cigar stumps around the cocoanut palm that night. This he must do; for, when he sailed away before the dawn in his yacht <i>Rambler</i>, he carried with him the answer to a riddle so big and preposterous that few in Anchuria had ventured even to propound it.</p>
|
||||
<p>But prosperously to the lucidity of these loose pages, Smith shall flutter among them again. In the nick of time he shall come to tell us why he strewed so many anxious cigar stumps around the coconut palm that night. This he must do; for, when he sailed away before the dawn in his yacht <i>Rambler</i>, he carried with him the answer to a riddle so big and preposterous that few in Anchuria had ventured even to propound it.</p>
|
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|
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<p>The plans for the detention of the flying President Miraflores and his companion at the coast line seemed hardly likely to fail. <abbr>Dr.</abbr> Zavalla himself had gone to the port of Alazan to establish a guard at that point. At Solitas the Liberal patriot Varras could be depended upon to keep close watch. Goodwin held himself responsible for the district about Coralio.</p>
|
||||
<p>The news of the president’s flight had been disclosed to no one in the coast towns save trusted members of the ambitious political party that was desirous of succeeding to power. The telegraph wire running from San Mateo to the coast had been cut far up on the mountain trail by an emissary of Zavalla’s. Long before this could be repaired and word received along it from the capital the fugitives would have reached the coast and the question of escape or capture been solved.</p>
|
||||
<p>Goodwin had stationed armed sentinels at frequent intervals along the shore for a mile in each direction from Coralio. They were instructed to keep a vigilant lookout during the night to prevent Miraflores from attempting to embark stealthily by means of some boat or sloop found by chance at the water’s edge. A dozen patrols walked the streets of Coralio unsuspected, ready to intercept the truant official should he show himself there.</p>
|
||||
<p>Goodwin was very well convinced that no precautions had been overlooked. He strolled about the streets that bore such high-sounding names and were but narrow, grass-covered lanes, lending his own aid to the vigil that had been intrusted to him by Bob Englehart.</p>
|
||||
<p>The town had begun the tepid round of its nightly diversions. A few leisurely dandies, clad in white duck, with flowing neckties, and swinging slim bamboo canes, threaded the grassy by-ways toward the houses of their favoured señoritas. Those who wooed the art of music dragged tirelessly at whining concertinas, or fingered lugubrious guitars at doors and windows. An occasional soldier from the <i>cuartel</i>, with flapping straw hat, without coat or shoes, hurried by, balancing his long gun like a lance in one hand. From every density of the foliage the giant tree frogs sounded their loud and irritating clatter. Further out, where the by-ways perished at the brink of the jungle, the guttural cries of marauding baboons and the coughing of the alligators in the black estuaries fractured the vain silence of the wood.</p>
|
||||
<p>Goodwin was very well convinced that no precautions had been overlooked. He strolled about the streets that bore such high-sounding names and were but narrow, grass-covered lanes, lending his own aid to the vigil that had been entrusted to him by Bob Englehart.</p>
|
||||
<p>The town had begun the tepid round of its nightly diversions. A few leisurely dandies, clad in white duck, with flowing neckties, and swinging slim bamboo canes, threaded the grassy byways toward the houses of their favoured señoritas. Those who wooed the art of music dragged tirelessly at whining concertinas, or fingered lugubrious guitars at doors and windows. An occasional soldier from the <i>cuartel</i>, with flapping straw hat, without coat or shoes, hurried by, balancing his long gun like a lance in one hand. From every density of the foliage the giant tree frogs sounded their loud and irritating clatter. Further out, where the byways perished at the brink of the jungle, the guttural cries of marauding baboons and the coughing of the alligators in the black estuaries fractured the vain silence of the wood.</p>
|
||||
<p>By ten o’clock the streets were deserted. The oil lamps that had burned, a sickly yellow, at random corners, had been extinguished by some economical civic agent. Coralio lay sleeping calmly between toppling mountains and encroaching sea like a stolen babe in the arms of its abductors. Somewhere over in that tropical darkness—perhaps already threading the profundities of the alluvial lowlands—the high adventurer and his mate were moving toward land’s end. The game of Fox-in-the-Morning should be coming soon to its close.</p>
|
||||
<p>Goodwin, at his deliberate gait, passed the long, low <i>cuartel</i> where Coralio’s contingent of Anchuria’s military force slumbered, with its bare toes pointed heavenward. There was a law that no civilian might come so near the headquarters of that citadel of war after nine o’clock, but Goodwin was always forgetting the minor statutes.</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i>Quién vive?</i>” shrieked the sentinel, wrestling prodigiously with his lengthy musket.</p>
|
||||
@ -24,7 +24,7 @@
|
||||
<p>The couple halted at the door of the Hotel de los Estranjeros, and the man struck upon the wood with the impatience of one unused to his entry being stayed. Madama was long in response; but after a time her light showed, the door was opened, and the guests housed.</p>
|
||||
<p>Goodwin stood in the quiet street, lighting another cigar. In two minutes a faint gleam began to show between the slats of the jalousies in the upper story of the hotel. “They have engaged rooms,” said Goodwin to himself. “So, then, their arrangements for sailing have yet to be made.”</p>
|
||||
<p>At that moment there came along one Estebán Delgado, a barber, an enemy to existing government, a jovial plotter against stagnation in any form. This barber was one of Coralio’s saddest dogs, often remaining out of doors as late as eleven, post meridian. He was a partisan Liberal; and he greeted Goodwin with flatulent importance as a brother in the cause. But he had something important to tell.</p>
|
||||
<p>“What think you, Don Frank!” he cried, in the universal tone of the conspirator. “I have to-night shaved <i>la barba</i>—what you call the ‘weeskers’ of the <i>Presidente</i> himself, of this countree! Consider! He sent for me to come. In the poor <i>casita</i> of an old woman he awaited me—in a verree leetle house in a dark place. <i>Carramba!</i>—el Señor Presidente to make himself thus secret and obscured! I think he desired not to be known—but, <i>carajo!</i> can you shave a man and not see his face? This gold piece he gave me, and said it was to be all quite still. I think, Don Frank, there is what you call a chip over the bug.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“What think you, Don Frank!” he cried, in the universal tone of the conspirator. “I have tonight shaved <i>la barba</i>—what you call the ‘weeskers’ of the <i>Presidente</i> himself, of this countree! Consider! He sent for me to come. In the poor <i>casita</i> of an old woman he awaited me—in a verree leetle house in a dark place. <i>Carramba!</i>—el Señor Presidente to make himself thus secret and obscured! I think he desired not to be known—but, <i>carajo!</i> can you shave a man and not see his face? This gold piece he gave me, and said it was to be all quite still. I think, Don Frank, there is what you call a chip over the bug.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Have you ever seen President Miraflores before?” asked Goodwin.</p>
|
||||
<p>“But once,” answered Estebán. “He is tall; and he had weeskers, verree black and sufficient.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Was anyone else present when you shaved him?”</p>
|
||||
@ -36,7 +36,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“I must come oftener,” said Goodwin, with the Goodwin smile. “I hear that your cognac is the best between Belize to the north and Rio to the south. Set out the bottle, Madama, and let us have the proof in <i>un vasito</i> for each of us.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“My <i>aguardiente</i>,” said Madama, with pride, “is the best. It grows, in beautiful bottles, in the dark places among the banana-trees. <i>Si, Señor.</i> Only at midnight can they be picked by sailor-men who bring them, before daylight comes, to your back door. Good <i>aguardiente</i> is a verree difficult fruit to handle, Señor Goodwin.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Smuggling, in Coralio, was much nearer than competition to being the life of trade. One spoke of it slyly, yet with a certain conceit, when it had been well accomplished.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You have guests in the house to-night,” said Goodwin, laying a silver dollar upon the counter.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You have guests in the house tonight,” said Goodwin, laying a silver dollar upon the counter.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why not?” said Madama, counting the change. “Two; but the smallest while finished to arrive. One señor, not quite old, and one señorita of sufficient handsomeness. To their rooms they have ascended, not desiring the to-eat nor the to-drink. Two rooms—<i>Numero</i> 9 and <i>Numero</i> 10.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I was expecting that gentleman and that lady,” said Goodwin. “I have important <i>negocios</i> that must be transacted. Will you allow me to see them?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why not?” sighed Madama, placidly. “Why should not Señor Goodwin ascend and speak to his friends? <i>Está bueno.</i> Room <i>Numero</i> 9 and room <i>Numero</i> 10.”</p>
|
||||
@ -61,7 +61,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Oh, yes,” answered Goodwin, smiling broadly. “There are no afternoon teas, no hand-organs, no department stores—and there is no extradition treaty.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“He told me,” went on the lady, speaking as if to herself, and with a slight frown, “that there were towns on this coast of beauty and importance; that there was a pleasing social order—especially an American colony of cultured residents.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“There is an American colony,” said Goodwin, gazing at her in some wonder. “Some of the members are all right. Some are fugitives from justice from the States. I recall two exiled bank presidents, one army paymaster under a cloud, a couple of manslayers, and a widow—arsenic, I believe, was the suspicion in her case. I myself complete the colony, but, as yet, I have not distinguished myself by any particular crime.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Do not lose hope,” said the lady, dryly; “I see nothing in your actions to-night to guarantee you further obscurity. Some mistake has been made; I do not know just where. But <i>him</i> you shall not disturb to-night. The journey has fatigued him so that he has fallen asleep, I think, in his clothes. You talk of stolen money! I do not understand you. Some mistake has been made. I will convince you. Remain where you are and I will bring you the valise that you seem to covet so, and show it to you.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Do not lose hope,” said the lady, dryly; “I see nothing in your actions tonight to guarantee you further obscurity. Some mistake has been made; I do not know just where. But <i>him</i> you shall not disturb tonight. The journey has fatigued him so that he has fallen asleep, I think, in his clothes. You talk of stolen money! I do not understand you. Some mistake has been made. I will convince you. Remain where you are and I will bring you the valise that you seem to covet so, and show it to you.”</p>
|
||||
<p>She moved toward the closed door that connected the two rooms, but stopped, and half turned and bestowed upon Goodwin a grave, searching look that ended in a quizzical smile.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You force my door,” she said, “and you follow your ruffianly behaviour with the basest accusations; and yet”—she hesitated, as if to reconsider what she was about to say—“and yet—it is a puzzling thing—I am sure there has been some mistake.”</p>
|
||||
<p>She took a step toward the door, but Goodwin stayed her by a light touch upon her arm. I have said before that women turned to look at him in the streets. He was the viking sort of man, big, good-looking, and with an air of kindly truculence. She was dark and proud, glowing or pale as her mood moved her. I do not know if Eve were light or dark, but if such a woman had stood in the garden I know that the apple would have been eaten. This woman was to be Goodwin’s fate, and he did not know it; but he must have felt the first throes of destiny, for, as he faced her, the knowledge of what report named her turned bitter in his throat.</p>
|
||||
@ -89,7 +89,7 @@
|
||||
<p>They will relate to you how the new government sifted the towns and raked the roads to find the valise containing Anchuria’s surplus capital, which the president was known to have carried with him, but all in vain. In Coralio Señor Goodwin himself led the searching party which combed that town as carefully as a woman combs her hair; but the money was not found.</p>
|
||||
<p>So they buried the dead man, without honours, back of the town near the little bridge that spans the mangrove swamp; and for a <i>real</i> a boy will show you his grave. They say that the old woman in whose hut the barber shaved the president placed the wooden slab at his head, and burned the inscription upon it with a hot iron.</p>
|
||||
<p>You will hear also that Señor Goodwin, like a tower of strength, shielded Doña Isabel Guilbert through those subsequent distressful days; and that his scruples as to her past career (if he had any) vanished; and her adventuresome waywardness (if she had any) left her, and they were wedded and were happy.</p>
|
||||
<p>The American built a home on a little foothill near the town. It is a conglomerate structure of native woods that, exported, would be worth a fortune, and of brick, palm, glass, bamboo and adobe. There is a paradise of nature about it; and something of the same sort within. The natives speak of its interior with hands uplifted in admiration. There are floors polished like mirrors and covered with hand-woven Indian rugs of silk fibre, tall ornaments and pictures, musical instruments and papered walls—“figure-it-to-yourself!” they exclaim.</p>
|
||||
<p>The American built a home on a little foothill near the town. It is a conglomerate structure of native woods that, exported, would be worth a fortune, and of brick, palm, glass, bamboo and adobe. There is a paradise of nature about it; and something of the same sort within. The natives speak of its interior with hands uplifted in admiration. There are floors polished like mirrors and covered with handwoven Indian rugs of silk fibre, tall ornaments and pictures, musical instruments and papered walls—“figure-it-to-yourself!” they exclaim.</p>
|
||||
<p>But they cannot tell you in Coralio (as you shall learn) what became of the money that Frank Goodwin dropped into the orange-tree. But that shall come later; for the palms are fluttering in the breeze, bidding us to sport and gaiety.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
|
@ -13,10 +13,10 @@
|
||||
<p>Without prejudice to <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Atwood, it will have to be acknowledged that, in this instance, it was the man who sought the office. As with the self-banished Geddie, it was nothing less than the artful smiles of lovely woman that had driven Johnny Atwood to the desperate expedient of accepting office under a despised Federal Government so that he might go far, far away and never see again the false, fair face that had wrecked his young life. The consulship at Coralio seemed to offer a retreat sufficiently removed and romantic enough to inject the necessary drama into the pastoral scenes of Dalesburg life.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was while playing the part of Cupid’s exile that Johnny added his handiwork to the long list of casualties along the Spanish Main by his famous manipulation of the shoe market, and his unparalleled feat of elevating the most despised and useless weed in his own country from obscurity to be a valuable product in international commerce.</p>
|
||||
<p>The trouble began, as trouble often begins instead of ending, with a romance. In Dalesburg there was a man named Elijah Hemstetter, who kept a general store. His family consisted of one daughter called Rosine, a name that atoned much for “Hemstetter.” This young woman was possessed of plentiful attractions, so that the young men of the community were agitated in their bosoms. Among the more agitated was Johnny, the son of Judge Atwood, who lived in the big colonial mansion on the edge of Dalesburg.</p>
|
||||
<p>It would seem that the desirable Rosine should have been pleased to return the affection of an Atwood, a name honoured all over the state long before and since the war. It does seem that she should have gladly consented to have been led into that stately but rather empty colonial mansion. But not so. There was a cloud on the horizon, a threatening, cumulus cloud, in the shape of a lively and shrewd young farmer in the neighbourhood who dared to enter the lists as a rival to the high-born Atwood.</p>
|
||||
<p>It would seem that the desirable Rosine should have been pleased to return the affection of an Atwood, a name honoured all over the state long before and since the war. It does seem that she should have gladly consented to have been led into that stately but rather empty colonial mansion. But not so. There was a cloud on the horizon, a threatening, cumulus cloud, in the shape of a lively and shrewd young farmer in the neighbourhood who dared to enter the lists as a rival to the highborn Atwood.</p>
|
||||
<p>One night Johnny propounded to Rosine a question that is considered of much importance by the young of the human species. The accessories were all there—moonlight, oleanders, magnolias, the mock-bird’s song. Whether or no the shadow of Pinkney Dawson, the prosperous young farmer, came between them on that occasion is not known; but Rosine’s answer was unfavourable. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> John De Graffenreid Atwood bowed till his hat touched the lawn grass, and went away with his head high, but with a sore wound in his pedigree and heart. A Hemstetter refuse an Atwood! Zounds!</p>
|
||||
<p>Among other accidents of that year was a Democratic president. Judge Atwood was a warhorse of Democracy. Johnny persuaded him to set the wheels moving for some foreign appointment. He would go away—away. Perhaps in years to come Rosine would think how true, how faithful his love had been, and would drop a tear—maybe in the cream she would be skimming for Pink Dawson’s breakfast.</p>
|
||||
<p>The wheels of politics revolved; and Johnny was appointed consul to Coralio. Just before leaving he dropped in at Hemstetter’s to say good-bye. There was a queer, pinkish look about Rosine’s eyes; and had the two been alone, the United States might have had to cast about for another consul. But Pink Dawson was there, of course, talking about his 400-acre orchard, and the three-mile alfalfa tract, and the 200-acre pasture. So Johnny shook hands with Rosine as coolly as if he were only going to run up to Montgomery for a couple of days. They had the royal manner when they chose, those Atwoods.</p>
|
||||
<p>The wheels of politics revolved; and Johnny was appointed consul to Coralio. Just before leaving he dropped in at Hemstetter’s to say goodbye. There was a queer, pinkish look about Rosine’s eyes; and had the two been alone, the United States might have had to cast about for another consul. But Pink Dawson was there, of course, talking about his 400-acre orchard, and the three-mile alfalfa tract, and the 200-acre pasture. So Johnny shook hands with Rosine as coolly as if he were only going to run up to Montgomery for a couple of days. They had the royal manner when they chose, those Atwoods.</p>
|
||||
<p>“If you happen to strike anything in the way of a good investment down there, Johnny,” said Pink Dawson, “just let me know, will you? I reckon I could lay my hands on a few extra thousands ‘most any time for a profitable deal.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Certainly, Pink,” said Johnny, pleasantly. “If I strike anything of the sort I’ll let you in with pleasure.”</p>
|
||||
<p>So Johnny went down to Mobile and took a fruit steamer for the coast of Anchuria.</p>
|
||||
@ -40,9 +40,9 @@
|
||||
<p>It was a scene set for the land of the lotus. The authority of the sea and the tropics, the mystery that attends unknown sails, and the prestige of drifting music on moonlit waters gave it an anodynous charm. Johnny Atwood felt it, and thought of Dalesburg; but as soon as Keogh’s mind had arrived at a theory concerning the peripatetic solo he sprang to the railing, and his ear-rending yawp fractured the silence of Coralio like a cannon shot.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Mel-lin-ger a-hoy!”</p>
|
||||
<p>The sloop was now on its outward tack; but from it came a clear, answering hail:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Good-bye, Billy … go-ing home—bye!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Goodbye, Billy … going home—bye!”</p>
|
||||
<p>The <i>Andador</i> was the sloop’s destination. No doubt some passenger with a sailing permit from some up-the-coast point had come down in this sloop to catch the regular fruit steamer on its return trip. Like a coquettish pigeon the little boat tacked on its eccentric way until at last its white sail was lost to sight against the larger bulk of the fruiter’s side.</p>
|
||||
<p>“That’s old H. P. Mellinger,” explained Keogh, dropping back into his chair. “He’s going back to New York. He was private secretary of the late hot-foot president of this grocery and fruit stand that they call a country. His job’s over now; and I guess old Mellinger is glad.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“That’s old H. P. Mellinger,” explained Keogh, dropping back into his chair. “He’s going back to New York. He was private secretary of the late hotfoot president of this grocery and fruit stand that they call a country. His job’s over now; and I guess old Mellinger is glad.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why does he disappear to music, like Zo-zo, the magic queen?” asked Johnny. “Just to show ’em that he doesn’t care?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“That noise you heard is a phonograph,” said Keogh. “I sold him that. Mellinger had a graft in this country that was the only thing of its kind in the world. The tooting machine saved it for him once, and he always carried it around with him afterward.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Tell me about it,” demanded Johnny, betraying interest.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -11,21 +11,21 @@
|
||||
<h3>THE PHONOGRAPH AND THE GRAFT<br/> </h3>
|
||||
<p>“What was this graft?” asked Johnny, with the impatience of the great public to whom tales are told.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ’Tis contrary to art and philosophy to give you the information,” said Keogh, calmly. “The art of narrative consists in concealing from your audience everything it wants to know until after you expose your favourite opinions on topics foreign to the subject. A good story is like a bitter pill with the sugar coating inside of it. I will begin, if you please, with a horoscope located in the Cherokee Nation; and end with a moral tune on the phonograph.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Me and Henry Horsecollar brought the first phonograph to this country. Henry was a quarter-breed, quarter-back Cherokee, educated East in the idioms of football, and West in contraband whisky, and a gentleman, the same as you and me. He was easy and romping in his ways; a man about six foot, with a kind of rubber-tire movement. Yes, he was a little man about five foot five, or five foot eleven. He was what you would call a medium tall man of average smallness. Henry had quit college once, and the Muscogee jail three times—the last-named institution on account of introducing and selling whisky in the territories. Henry Horsecollar never let any cigar stores come up and stand behind him. He didn’t belong to that tribe of Indians.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Me and Henry Horsecollar brought the first phonograph to this country. Henry was a quarter-breed, quarterback Cherokee, educated East in the idioms of football, and West in contraband whisky, and a gentleman, the same as you and me. He was easy and romping in his ways; a man about six foot, with a kind of rubber-tire movement. Yes, he was a little man about five foot five, or five foot eleven. He was what you would call a medium tall man of average smallness. Henry had quit college once, and the Muscogee jail three times—the last-named institution on account of introducing and selling whisky in the territories. Henry Horsecollar never let any cigar stores come up and stand behind him. He didn’t belong to that tribe of Indians.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Henry and me met at Texarkana, and figured out this phonograph scheme. He had $360 which came to him out of a land allotment in the reservation. I had run down from Little Rock on account of a distressful scene I had witnessed on the street there. A man stood on a box and passed around some gold watches, screw case, stem-winders, Elgin movement, very elegant. Twenty bucks they cost you over the counter. At three dollars the crowd fought for the tickers. The man happened to find a valise full of them handy, and he passed them out like putting hot biscuits on a plate. The backs were hard to unscrew, but the crowd put its ear to the case, and they ticked mollifying and agreeable. Three of these watches were genuine tickers; the rest were only kickers. Hey? Why, empty cases with one of them horny black bugs that fly around electric lights in ’em. Them bugs kick off minutes and seconds industrious and beautiful. So, this man I was speaking of cleaned up $288; and then he went away, because he knew that when it came time to wind watches in Little Rock an entomologist would be needed, and he wasn’t one.</p>
|
||||
<p>“So, as I say, Henry had $360, and I had $288. The idea of introducing the phonograph to South America was Henry’s; but I took to it freely, being fond of machinery of all kinds.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘The Latin races,’ says Henry, explaining easy in the idioms he learned at college, ‘are peculiarly adapted to be victims of the phonograph. They have the artistic temperament. They yearn for music and color and gaiety. They give wampum to the hand-organ man and the four-legged chicken in the tent when they’re months behind with the grocery and the bread-fruit tree.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Then,’ says I, ‘we’ll export canned music to the Latins; but I’m mindful of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Julius Cæsar’s account of ’em where he says: “<i>Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est</i>;” which is the same as to say, “We will need all of our gall in devising means to tree them parties.” ’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘The Latin races,’ says Henry, explaining easy in the idioms he learned at college, ‘are peculiarly adapted to be victims of the phonograph. They have the artistic temperament. They yearn for music and color and gaiety. They give wampum to the hand-organ man and the four-legged chicken in the tent when they’re months behind with the grocery and the breadfruit tree.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Then,’ says I, ‘we’ll export canned music to the Latins; but I’m mindful of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Julius Caesar’s account of ’em where he says: “<i>Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est</i>;” which is the same as to say, “We will need all of our gall in devising means to tree them parties.” ’</p>
|
||||
<p>“I hated to make a show of education; but I was disinclined to be overdone in syntax by a mere Indian, a member of a race to which we owe nothing except the land on which the United States is situated.</p>
|
||||
<p>“We bought a fine phonograph in Texarkana—one of the best make—and half a trunkful of records. We packed up, and took the T. and P. for New Orleans. From that celebrated centre of molasses and disfranchised coon songs we took a steamer for South America.</p>
|
||||
<p>“We landed at Solitas, forty miles up the coast from here. ’Twas a palatable enough place to look at. The houses were clean and white; and to look at ’em stuck around among the scenery they reminded you of hard-boiled eggs served with lettuce. There was a block of skyscraper mountains in the suburbs; and they kept pretty quiet, like they had crept up there and were watching the town. And the sea was remarking ‘Sh-sh-sh’ on the beach; and now and then a ripe cocoanut would drop kerblip in the sand; and that was all there was doing. Yes, I judge that town was considerably on the quiet. I judge that after Gabriel quits blowing his horn, and the car starts, with Philadelphia swinging to the last strap, and Pine Gully, Arkansas, hanging onto the rear step, this town of Solitas will wake up and ask if anybody spoke.</p>
|
||||
<p>“We landed at Solitas, forty miles up the coast from here. ’Twas a palatable enough place to look at. The houses were clean and white; and to look at ’em stuck around among the scenery they reminded you of hard-boiled eggs served with lettuce. There was a block of skyscraper mountains in the suburbs; and they kept pretty quiet, like they had crept up there and were watching the town. And the sea was remarking ‘Sh-sh-sh’ on the beach; and now and then a ripe coconut would drop kerblip in the sand; and that was all there was doing. Yes, I judge that town was considerably on the quiet. I judge that after Gabriel quits blowing his horn, and the car starts, with Philadelphia swinging to the last strap, and Pine Gully, Arkansas, hanging onto the rear step, this town of Solitas will wake up and ask if anybody spoke.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The captain went ashore with us, and offered to conduct what he seemed to like to call the obsequies. He introduced Henry and me to the United States Consul, and a roan man, the head of the Department of Mercenary and Licentious Dispositions, the way it read upon his sign.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I touch here again a week from to-day,’ says the captain.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I touch here again a week from today,’ says the captain.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘By that time,’ we told him, ‘we’ll be amassing wealth in the interior towns with our galvanized prima donna and correct imitations of Sousa’s band excavating a march from a tin mine.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Ye’ll not,’ says the captain. ‘Ye’ll be hypnotized. Any gentleman in the audience who kindly steps upon the stage and looks this country in the eye will be converted to the hypothesis that he’s but a fly in the Elgin creamery. Ye’ll be standing knee deep in the surf waiting for me, and your machine for making Hamburger steak out of the hitherto respected art of music will be playing “There’s no place like home.” ’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Henry skinned a twenty off his roll, and received from the Bureau of Mercenary Dispositions a paper bearing a red seal and a dialect story, and no change.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Then we got the consul full of red wine, and struck him for a horoscope. He was a thin, youngish kind of man, I should say past fifty, sort of French-Irish in his affections, and puffed up with disconsolation. Yes, he was a flattened kind of a man, in whom drink lay stagnant, inclined to corpulence and misery. Yes, I think he was a kind of Dutchman, being very sad and genial in his ways.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘The marvelous invention,’ he says, ‘entitled the phonograph, has never invaded these shores. The people have never heard it. They would not believe it if they should. Simple-hearted children of nature, progress has never condemned them to accept the work of a can-opener as an overture, and rag-time might incite them to a bloody revolution. But you can try the experiment. The best chance you have is that the populace may not wake up when you play. There’s two ways,’ says the consul, ‘they may take it. They may become inebriated with attention, like an Atlanta colonel listening to “Marching Through Georgia,” or they will get excited and transpose the key of the music with an axe and yourselves into a dungeon. In the latter case,’ says the consul, ‘I’ll do my duty by cabling to the State Department, and I’ll wrap the Stars and Stripes around you when you come to be shot, and threaten them with the vengeance of the greatest gold export and financial reserve nation on earth. The flag is full of bullet holes now,’ says the consul, ‘made in that way. Twice before,’ says the consul, ‘I have cabled our government for a couple of gunboats to protect American citizens. The first time the Department sent me a pair of gum boots. The other time was when a man named Pease was going to be executed here. They referred that appeal to the Secretary of Agriculture. Let us now disturb the señor behind the bar for a subsequence of the red wine.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘The marvelous invention,’ he says, ‘entitled the phonograph, has never invaded these shores. The people have never heard it. They would not believe it if they should. Simple-hearted children of nature, progress has never condemned them to accept the work of a can-opener as an overture, and ragtime might incite them to a bloody revolution. But you can try the experiment. The best chance you have is that the populace may not wake up when you play. There’s two ways,’ says the consul, ‘they may take it. They may become inebriated with attention, like an Atlanta colonel listening to “Marching Through Georgia,” or they will get excited and transpose the key of the music with an axe and yourselves into a dungeon. In the latter case,’ says the consul, ‘I’ll do my duty by cabling to the State Department, and I’ll wrap the Stars and Stripes around you when you come to be shot, and threaten them with the vengeance of the greatest gold export and financial reserve nation on earth. The flag is full of bullet holes now,’ says the consul, ‘made in that way. Twice before,’ says the consul, ‘I have cabled our government for a couple of gunboats to protect American citizens. The first time the Department sent me a pair of gum boots. The other time was when a man named Peas was going to be executed here. They referred that appeal to the Secretary of Agriculture. Let us now disturb the señor behind the bar for a subsequence of the red wine.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Thus soliloquized the consul of Solitas to me and Henry Horsecollar.</p>
|
||||
<p>“But, notwithstanding, we hired a room that afternoon in the Calle de los Angeles, the main street that runs along the shore, and put our trunks there. ’Twas a good-sized room, dark and cheerful, but small. ’Twas on a various street, diversified by houses and conservatory plants. The peasantry of the city passed to and fro on the fine pasturage between the sidewalks. ’Twas, for the world, like an opera chorus when the Royal Kafoozlum is about to enter.</p>
|
||||
<p>“We were rubbing the dust off the machine and getting fixed to start business the next day, when a big, fine-looking white man in white clothes stopped at the door and looked in. We extended the invitations, and he walked inside and sized us up. He was chewing a long cigar, and wrinkling his eyes, meditative, like a girl trying to decide which dress to wear to the party.</p>
|
||||
@ -35,16 +35,16 @@
|
||||
<p>“The white man looks at Henry Horsecollar and hesitates.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Injun,’ says Henry; ‘tame Injun.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Mellinger,’ says the man—‘Homer P. Mellinger. Boys, you’re confiscated. You’re babes in the wood without a chaperon or referee, and it’s my duty to start you going. I’ll knock out the props and launch you proper in the pellucid waters of this tropical mud puddle. You’ll have to be christened, and if you’ll come with me I’ll break a bottle of wine across your bows, according to Hoyle.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, for two days Homer P. Mellinger did the honors. That man cut ice in Anchuria. He was It. He was the Royal Kafoozlum. If me and Henry was babes in the wood, he was a Robin Redbreast from the topmost bough. Him and me and Henry Horsecollar locked arms, and toted that phonograph around, and had wassail and diversions. Everywhere we found doors open we went inside and set the machine going, and Mellinger called upon the people to observe the artful music and his two lifelong friends, the Señors Americanos. The opera chorus was agitated with esteem, and followed us from house to house. There was a different kind of drink to be had with every tune. The natives had acquirements of a pleasant thing in the way of a drink that gums itself to the recollection. They chop off the end of a green cocoanut, and pour in on the juice of it French brandy and other adjuvants. We had them and other things.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, for two days Homer P. Mellinger did the honors. That man cut ice in Anchuria. He was It. He was the Royal Kafoozlum. If me and Henry was babes in the wood, he was a Robin Redbreast from the topmost bough. Him and me and Henry Horsecollar locked arms, and toted that phonograph around, and had wassail and diversions. Everywhere we found doors open we went inside and set the machine going, and Mellinger called upon the people to observe the artful music and his two lifelong friends, the Señors Americanos. The opera chorus was agitated with esteem, and followed us from house to house. There was a different kind of drink to be had with every tune. The natives had acquirements of a pleasant thing in the way of a drink that gums itself to the recollection. They chop off the end of a green coconut, and pour in on the juice of it French brandy and other adjuvants. We had them and other things.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Mine and Henry’s money was counterfeit. Everything was on Homer P. Mellinger. That man could find rolls of bills concealed in places on his person where Hermann the Wizard couldn’t have conjured out a rabbit or an omelette. He could have founded universities, and made orchid collections, and then had enough left to purchase the colored vote of his country. Henry and me wondered what his graft was. One evening he told us.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Boys,’ said he, ‘I’ve deceived you. You think I’m a painted butterfly; but in fact I’m the hardest worked man in this country. Ten years ago I landed on its shores; and two years ago on the point of its jaw. Yes, I guess I can get the decision over this ginger cake commonwealth at the end of any round I choose. I’ll confide in you because you are my countrymen and guests, even if you have assaulted my adopted shores with the worst system of noises ever set to music.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘My job is private secretary to the president of this republic; and my duties are running it. I’m not headlined in the bills, but I’m the mustard in the salad dressing just the same. There isn’t a law goes before Congress, there isn’t a concession granted, there isn’t an import duty levied but what H. P. Mellinger he cooks and seasons it. In the front office I fill the president’s inkstand and search visiting statesmen for dirks and dynamite; but in the back room I dictate the policy of the government. You’d never guess in the world how I got my pull. It’s the only graft of its kind on earth. I’ll put you wise. You remember the old top-liner in the copy book—“Honesty is the Best Policy”? That’s it. I’m working honesty for a graft. I’m the only honest man in the republic. The government knows it; the people know it; the boodlers know it; the foreign investors know it. I make the government keep its faith. If a man is promised a job he gets it. If outside capital buys a concession it gets the goods. I run a monopoly of square dealing here. There’s no competition. If Colonel Diogenes were to flash his lantern in this precinct he’d have my address inside of two minutes. There isn’t big money in it, but it’s a sure thing, and lets a man sleep of nights.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Thus Homer P. Mellinger made oration to me and Henry Horsecollar. And, later, he divested himself of this remark:</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Boys, I’m to hold a <i>soirée</i> this evening with a gang of leading citizens, and I want your assistance. You bring the musical corn sheller and give the affair the outside appearance of a function. There’s important business on hand, but it mustn’t show. I can talk to you people. I’ve been pained for years on account of not having anybody to blow off and brag to. I get homesick sometimes, and I’d swap the entire perquisites of office for just one hour to have a stein and a caviare sandwich somewhere on Thirty-fourth Street, and stand and watch the street cars go by, and smell the peanut roaster at old Giuseppe’s fruit stand.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘there’s fine caviare at Billy Renfrew’s café, corner of Thirty-fourth and—’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘God knows it,’ interrupts Mellinger, ‘and if you’d told me you knew Billy Renfrew I’d have invented tons of ways of making you happy. Billy was my side-kicker in New York. There is a man who never knew what crooked was. Here I am working Honesty for a graft, but that man loses money on it. Carrambos! I get sick at times of this country. Everything’s rotten. From the executive down to the coffee pickers, they’re plotting to down each other and skin their friends. If a mule driver takes off his hat to an official, that man figures it out that he’s a popular idol, and sets his pegs to stir up a revolution and upset the administration. It’s one of my little chores as private secretary to smell out these revolutions and affix the kibosh before they break out and scratch the paint off the government property. That’s why I’m down here now in this mildewed coast town. The governor of the district and his crew are plotting to uprise. I’ve got every one of their names, and they’re invited to listen to the phonograph to-night, compliments of H. P. M. That’s the way I’ll get them in a bunch, and things are on the programme to happen to them.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Boys, I’m to hold a <i>soirée</i> this evening with a gang of leading citizens, and I want your assistance. You bring the musical corn sheller and give the affair the outside appearance of a function. There’s important business on hand, but it mustn’t show. I can talk to you people. I’ve been pained for years on account of not having anybody to blow off and brag to. I get homesick sometimes, and I’d swap the entire perquisites of office for just one hour to have a stein and a caviar sandwich somewhere on Thirty-fourth Street, and stand and watch the street cars go by, and smell the peanut roaster at old Giuseppe’s fruit stand.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘there’s fine caviar at Billy Renfrew’s café, corner of Thirty-fourth and—’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘God knows it,’ interrupts Mellinger, ‘and if you’d told me you knew Billy Renfrew I’d have invented tons of ways of making you happy. Billy was my side-kicker in New York. There is a man who never knew what crooked was. Here I am working Honesty for a graft, but that man loses money on it. Carrambos! I get sick at times of this country. Everything’s rotten. From the executive down to the coffee pickers, they’re plotting to down each other and skin their friends. If a mule driver takes off his hat to an official, that man figures it out that he’s a popular idol, and sets his pegs to stir up a revolution and upset the administration. It’s one of my little chores as private secretary to smell out these revolutions and affix the kibosh before they break out and scratch the paint off the government property. That’s why I’m down here now in this mildewed coast town. The governor of the district and his crew are plotting to uprise. I’ve got every one of their names, and they’re invited to listen to the phonograph tonight, compliments of H. P. M. That’s the way I’ll get them in a bunch, and things are on the programme to happen to them.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“We three were sitting at table in the cantina of the Purified Saints. Mellinger poured out wine, and was looking some worried; I was thinking.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘They’re a sharp crowd,’ he says, kind of fretful. ‘They’re capitalized by a foreign syndicate after rubber, and they’re loaded to the muzzle for bribing. I’m sick,’ goes on Mellinger, ‘of comic opera. I want to smell East River and wear suspenders again. At times I feel like throwing up my job, but I’m <span class="nowrap">d⸺n</span> fool enough to be sort of proud of it. “There’s Mellinger,” they say here. “<i>Por Dios!</i> you can’t touch him with a million.” I’d like to take that record back and show it to Billy Renfrew some day; and that tightens my grip whenever I see a fat thing that I could corral just by winking one eye—and losing my graft. By <span class="nowrap">⸺,</span> they can’t monkey with me. They know it. What money I get I make honest and spend it. Some day I’ll make a pile and go back and eat caviare with Billy. To-night I’ll show you how to handle a bunch of corruptionists. I’ll show them what Mellinger, private secretary, means when you spell it with the cotton and tissue paper off.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘They’re a sharp crowd,’ he says, kind of fretful. ‘They’re capitalized by a foreign syndicate after rubber, and they’re loaded to the muzzle for bribing. I’m sick,’ goes on Mellinger, ‘of comic opera. I want to smell East River and wear suspenders again. At times I feel like throwing up my job, but I’m <span class="nowrap">d⸺n</span> fool enough to be sort of proud of it. “There’s Mellinger,” they say here. “<i>Por Dios!</i> you can’t touch him with a million.” I’d like to take that record back and show it to Billy Renfrew some day; and that tightens my grip whenever I see a fat thing that I could corral just by winking one eye—and losing my graft. By <span class="nowrap">⸺,</span> they can’t monkey with me. They know it. What money I get I make honest and spend it. Some day I’ll make a pile and go back and eat caviar with Billy. Tonight I’ll show you how to handle a bunch of corruptionists. I’ll show them what Mellinger, private secretary, means when you spell it with the cotton and tissue paper off.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Mellinger appears shaky, and breaks his glass against the neck of the bottle.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I says to myself, ‘White man, if I’m not mistaken there’s been a bait laid out where the tail of your eye could see it.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“That night, according to arrangements, me and Henry took the phonograph to a room in a ‘dobe house in a dirty side street, where the grass was knee high. ’Twas a long room, lit with smoky oil lamps. There was plenty of chairs, and a table at the back end. We set the phonograph on the table. Mellinger was there, walking up and down, disturbed in his predicaments. He chewed cigars and spat ’em out, and he bit the thumb nail of his left hand.</p>
|
||||
@ -56,7 +56,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“That governor man was suitable for uprisings and policies. I judge he was a ready kind of man, who took his own time. Yes, he was full of attention and immediateness. He leaned his hands on the table and imposed his face toward the secretary man.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Do the American señors understand Spanish?’ he asks in his native accents.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘They do not,’ says Mellinger.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Then listen,’ goes on the Latin man, prompt. ‘The musics are of sufficient prettiness, but not of necessity. Let us speak of business. I well know why we are here, since I observe my compatriots. You had a whisper yesterday, Señor Mellinger, of our proposals. To-night we will speak out. We know that you stand in the president’s favour, and we know your influence. The government will be changed. We know the worth of your services. We esteem your friendship and aid so much that’—Mellinger raises his hand, but the governor man bottles him up. ‘Do not speak until I have done.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Then listen,’ goes on the Latin man, prompt. ‘The musics are of sufficient prettiness, but not of necessity. Let us speak of business. I well know why we are here, since I observe my compatriots. You had a whisper yesterday, Señor Mellinger, of our proposals. Tonight we will speak out. We know that you stand in the president’s favour, and we know your influence. The government will be changed. We know the worth of your services. We esteem your friendship and aid so much that’—Mellinger raises his hand, but the governor man bottles him up. ‘Do not speak until I have done.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“The governor man then draws a package wrapped in paper from his pocket, and lays it on the table by Mellinger’s hand.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘In that you will find fifty thousand dollars in money of your country. You can do nothing against us, but you can be worth that for us. Go back to the capital and obey our instructions. Take that money now. We trust you. You will find with it a paper giving in detail the work you will be expected to do for us. Do not have the unwiseness to refuse.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“The governor man paused, with his eyes fixed on Mellinger, full of expressions and observances. I looked at Mellinger, and was glad Billy Renfrew couldn’t see him then. The sweat was popping out on his forehead, and he stood dumb, tapping the little package with the ends of his fingers. The colorado-maduro gang was after his graft. He had only to change his politics, and stuff five fingers in his inside pocket.</p>
|
||||
@ -64,13 +64,13 @@
|
||||
<p>“Henry stooped down and got a record from the basketful we’d brought, slid it in the phonograph, and started her off. It was a cornet solo, very neat and beautiful, and the name of it was ‘Home, Sweet Home.’ Not one of them fifty odd men in the room moved while it was playing, and the governor man kept his eyes steady on Mellinger. I saw Mellinger’s head go up little by little, and his hand came creeping away from the package. Not until the last note sounded did anybody stir. And then Homer P. Mellinger takes up the bundle of boodle and slams it in the governor man’s face.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘That’s my answer,’ says Mellinger, private secretary, ‘and there’ll be another in the morning. I have proofs of conspiracy against every man of you. The show is over, gentlemen.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘There’s one more act,’ puts in the governor man. ‘You are a servant, I believe, employed by the president to copy letters and answer raps at the door. I am governor here. <i>Señores</i>, I call upon you in the name of the cause to seize this man.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“That brindled gang of conspirators shoved back their chairs and advanced in force. I could see where Mellinger had made a mistake in massing his enemy so as to make a grand-stand play. I think he made another one, too; but we can pass that, Mellinger’s idea of a graft and mine being different, according to estimations and points of view.</p>
|
||||
<p>“That brindled gang of conspirators shoved back their chairs and advanced in force. I could see where Mellinger had made a mistake in massing his enemy so as to make a grandstand play. I think he made another one, too; but we can pass that, Mellinger’s idea of a graft and mine being different, according to estimations and points of view.</p>
|
||||
<p>“There was only one window and door in that room, and they were in the front end. Here was fifty odd Latin men coming in a bunch to obstruct the legislation of Mellinger. You may say there were three of us, for me and Henry, simultaneous, declared New York City and the Cherokee Nation in sympathy with the weaker party.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Then it was that Henry Horsecollar rose to a point of disorder and intervened, showing, admirable, the advantages of education as applied to the American Indian’s natural intellect and native refinement. He stood up and smoothed back his hair on each side with his hands as you have seen little girls do when they play.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Get behind me, both of you,’ says Henry.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘What’s it to be, chief?’ I asked.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I’m going to buck centre,’ says Henry, in his football idioms. ‘There isn’t a tackle in the lot of them. Follow me close, and rush the game.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Then that cultured Red Man exhaled an arrangement of sounds with his mouth that made the Latin aggregation pause, with thoughtfulness and hesitations. The matter of his proclamation seemed to be a co-operation of the Carlisle war-whoop with the Cherokee college yell. He went at the chocolate team like a bean out of a little boy’s nigger shooter. His right elbow laid out the governor man on the gridiron, and he made a lane the length of the crowd so wide that a woman could have carried a step-ladder through it without striking against anything. All Mellinger and me had to do was to follow.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Then that cultured Red Man exhaled an arrangement of sounds with his mouth that made the Latin aggregation pause, with thoughtfulness and hesitations. The matter of his proclamation seemed to be a cooperation of the Carlisle war-whoop with the Cherokee college yell. He went at the chocolate team like a bean out of a little boy’s nigger shooter. His right elbow laid out the governor man on the gridiron, and he made a lane the length of the crowd so wide that a woman could have carried a stepladder through it without striking against anything. All Mellinger and me had to do was to follow.</p>
|
||||
<p>“It took us just three minutes to get out of that street around to military headquarters, where Mellinger had things his own way. A colonel and a battalion of bare-toed infantry turned out and went back to the scene of the musicale with us, but the conspirator gang was gone. But we recaptured the phonograph with honours of war, and marched back to the <i>cuartel</i> with it playing ‘All Coons Look Alike to Me.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“The next day Mellinger takes me and Henry to one side, and begins to shed tens and twenties.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I want to buy that phonograph,’ says he. ‘I liked that last tune it played at the <i>soirée</i>.’</p>
|
||||
|
@ -11,8 +11,8 @@
|
||||
<h3>MONEY MAZE<br/> </h3>
|
||||
<p>The new administration of Anchuria entered upon its duties and privileges with enthusiasm. Its first act was to send an agent to Coralio with imperative orders to recover, if possible, the sum of money ravished from the treasury by the ill-fated Miraflores.</p>
|
||||
<p>Colonel Emilio Falcon, the private secretary of Losada, the new president, was despatched from the capital upon this important mission.</p>
|
||||
<p>The position of private secretary to a tropical president is a responsible one. He must be a diplomat, a spy, a ruler of men, a body-guard to his chief, and a smeller-out of plots and nascent revolutions. Often he is the power behind the throne, the dictator of policy; and a president chooses him with a dozen times the care with which he selects a matrimonial mate.</p>
|
||||
<p>Colonel Falcon, a handsome and urbane gentleman of Castilian courtesy and débonnaire manners, came to Coralio with the task before him of striking upon the cold trail of the lost money. There he conferred with the military authorities, who had received instructions to co-operate with him in the search.</p>
|
||||
<p>The position of private secretary to a tropical president is a responsible one. He must be a diplomat, a spy, a ruler of men, a bodyguard to his chief, and a smeller-out of plots and nascent revolutions. Often he is the power behind the throne, the dictator of policy; and a president chooses him with a dozen times the care with which he selects a matrimonial mate.</p>
|
||||
<p>Colonel Falcon, a handsome and urbane gentleman of Castilian courtesy and débonnaire manners, came to Coralio with the task before him of striking upon the cold trail of the lost money. There he conferred with the military authorities, who had received instructions to cooperate with him in the search.</p>
|
||||
<p>Colonel Falcon established his headquarters in one of the rooms of the Casa Morena. Here for a week he held informal sittings—much as if he were a kind of unified grand jury—and summoned before him all those whose testimony might illumine the financial tragedy that had accompanied the less momentous one of the late president’s death.</p>
|
||||
<p>Two or three who were thus examined, among whom was the barber Estebán, declared that they had identified the body of the president before its burial.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Of a truth,” testified Estebán before the mighty secretary, “it was he, the president. Consider!—how could I shave a man and not see his face? He sent for me to shave him in a small house. He had a beard very black and thick. Had I ever seen the president before? Why not? I saw him once ride forth in a carriage from the <i>vapor</i> in Solitas. When I shaved him he gave me a gold piece, and said there was to be no talk. But I am a Liberal—I am devoted to my country—and I spake of these things to Señor Goodwin.”</p>
|
||||
@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“To my house they came,” said she—“one <i>señor</i>, not quite old, and one <i>señorita</i> of sufficient handsomeness. They desired not to eat or to drink—not even of my <i>aguardiente</i>, which is the best. To their rooms they ascended—<i>Numero Nueve</i> and <i>Numero Diez</i>. Later came Señor Goodwin, who ascended to speak with them. Then I heard a great noise like that of a <i>canon</i>, and they said that the <i>pobre Presidente</i> had shot himself. <i>Está bueno.</i> I saw nothing of money or of the thing you call <i>veliz</i> that you say he carried it in.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Colonel Falcon soon came to the reasonable conclusion that if anyone in Coralio could furnish a clue to the vanished money, Frank Goodwin must be the man. But the wise secretary pursued a different course in seeking information from the American. Goodwin was a powerful friend to the new administration, and one who was not to be carelessly dealt with in respect to either his honesty or his courage. Even the private secretary of His Excellency hesitated to have this rubber prince and mahogany baron haled before him as a common citizen of Anchuria. So he sent Goodwin a flowery epistle, each word-petal dripping with honey, requesting the favour of an interview. Goodwin replied with an invitation to dinner at his own house.</p>
|
||||
<p>Before the hour named the American walked over to the Casa Morena, and greeted his guest frankly and friendly. Then the two strolled, in the cool of the afternoon, to Goodwin’s home in the environs.</p>
|
||||
<p>The American left Colonel Falcon in a big, cool, shadowed room with a floor of inlaid and polished woods that any millionaire in the States would have envied, excusing himself for a few minutes. He crossed a <i>patio</i>, shaded with deftly arranged awnings and plants, and entered a long room looking upon the sea in the opposite wing of the house. The broad jalousies were opened wide, and the ocean breeze flowed in through the room, an invisible current of coolness and health. Goodwin’s wife sat near one of the windows, making a water-color sketch of the afternoon seascape.</p>
|
||||
<p>The American left Colonel Falcon in a big, cool, shadowed room with a floor of inlaid and polished woods that any millionaire in the States would have envied, excusing himself for a few minutes. He crossed a <i>patio</i>, shaded with deftly arranged awnings and plants, and entered a long room looking upon the sea in the opposite wing of the house. The broad jalousies were opened wide, and the ocean breeze flowed in through the room, an invisible current of coolness and health. Goodwin’s wife sat near one of the windows, making a watercolor sketch of the afternoon seascape.</p>
|
||||
<p>Here was a woman who looked to be happy. And more—she looked to be content. Had a poet been inspired to pen just similes concerning her favour, he would have likened her full, clear eyes, with their white-encircled, gray irises, to moonflowers. With none of the goddesses whose traditional charms have become coldly classic would the discerning rhymester have compared her. She was purely Paradisaic, not Olympian. If you can imagine Eve, after the eviction, beguiling the flaming warriors and serenely re-entering the Garden, you will have her. Just so human, and still so harmonious with Eden seemed <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Goodwin.</p>
|
||||
<p>When her husband entered she looked up, and her lips curved and parted; her eyelids fluttered twice or thrice—a movement remindful (Poesy forgive us!) of the tail-wagging of a faithful dog—and a little ripple went through her like the commotion set up in a weeping willow by a puff of wind. Thus she ever acknowledged his coming, were it twenty times a day. If they who sometimes sat over their wine in Coralio, reshaping old, diverting stories of the madcap career of Isabel Guilbert, could have seen the wife of Frank Goodwin that afternoon in the estimable aura of her happy wifehood, they might have disbelieved, or have agreed to forget, those graphic annals of the life of the one for whom their president gave up his country and his honour.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I have brought a guest to dinner,” said Goodwin. “One Colonel Falcon, from San Mateo. He is come on government business. I do not think you will care to see him, so I prescribe for you one of those convenient and indisputable feminine headaches.”</p>
|
||||
|
@ -9,25 +9,25 @@
|
||||
<section id="chapter-8" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h2>VIII</h2>
|
||||
<h3>THE <abbr class="era">AD</abbr>MIRAL<br/> </h3>
|
||||
<p>Spilled milk draws few tears from an Anchurian administration. Many are its lacteal sources; and the clocks’ hands point forever to milking time. Even the rich cream skimmed from the treasury by the bewitched Miraflores did not cause the newly-installed patriots to waste time in unprofitable regrets. The government philosophically set about supplying the deficiency by increasing the import duties and by “suggesting” to wealthy private citizens that contributions according to their means would be considered patriotic and in order. Prosperity was expected to attend the reign of Losada, the new president. The ousted office-holders and military favourites organized a new “Liberal” party, and began to lay their plans for a re-succession. Thus the game of Anchurian politics began, like a Chinese comedy, to unwind slowly its serial length. Here and there Mirth peeps for an instant from the wings and illumines the florid lines.</p>
|
||||
<p>Spilled milk draws few tears from an Anchurian administration. Many are its lacteal sources; and the clocks’ hands point forever to milking time. Even the rich cream skimmed from the treasury by the bewitched Miraflores did not cause the newly-installed patriots to waste time in unprofitable regrets. The government philosophically set about supplying the deficiency by increasing the import duties and by “suggesting” to wealthy private citizens that contributions according to their means would be considered patriotic and in order. Prosperity was expected to attend the reign of Losada, the new president. The ousted officeholders and military favourites organized a new “Liberal” party, and began to lay their plans for a re-succession. Thus the game of Anchurian politics began, like a Chinese comedy, to unwind slowly its serial length. Here and there Mirth peeps for an instant from the wings and illumines the florid lines.</p>
|
||||
<p>A dozen quarts of champagne in conjunction with an informal sitting of the president and his cabinet led to the establishment of the navy and the appointment of Felipe Carrera as its admiral.</p>
|
||||
<p>Next to the champagne the credit of the appointment belongs to Don Sabas Placido, the newly confirmed Minister of War.</p>
|
||||
<p>The president had requested a convention of his cabinet for the discussion of questions politic and for the transaction of certain routine matters of state. The session had been signally tedious; the business and the wine prodigiously dry. A sudden, prankish humour of Don Sabas, impelling him to the deed, spiced the grave affairs of state with a whiff of agreeable playfulness.</p>
|
||||
<p>In the dilatory order of business had come a bulletin from the coast department of Orilla del Mar reporting the seizure by the custom-house officers at the town of Coralio of the sloop <i>Estrella del Noche</i> and her cargo of drygoods, patent medicines, granulated sugar and three-star brandy. Also six Martini rifles and a barrel of American whisky. Caught in the act of smuggling, the sloop with its cargo was now, according to law, the property of the republic.</p>
|
||||
<p>In the dilatory order of business had come a bulletin from the coast department of Orilla del Mar reporting the seizure by the customhouse officers at the town of Coralio of the sloop <i>Estrella del Noche</i> and her cargo of drygoods, patent medicines, granulated sugar and three-star brandy. Also six Martini rifles and a barrel of American whisky. Caught in the act of smuggling, the sloop with its cargo was now, according to law, the property of the republic.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Collector of Customs, in making his report, departed from the conventional forms so far as to suggest that the confiscated vessel be converted to the use of the government. The prize was the first capture to the credit of the department in ten years. The collector took opportunity to pat his department on the back.</p>
|
||||
<p>It often happened that government officers required transportation from point to point along the coast, and means were usually lacking. Furthermore, the sloop could be manned by a loyal crew and employed as a coast guard to discourage the pernicious art of smuggling. The collector also ventured to nominate one to whom the charge of the boat could be safely intrusted—a young man of Coralio, Felipe Carrera—not, be it understood, one of extreme wisdom, but loyal and the best sailor along the coast.</p>
|
||||
<p>It often happened that government officers required transportation from point to point along the coast, and means were usually lacking. Furthermore, the sloop could be manned by a loyal crew and employed as a coast guard to discourage the pernicious art of smuggling. The collector also ventured to nominate one to whom the charge of the boat could be safely entrusted—a young man of Coralio, Felipe Carrera—not, be it understood, one of extreme wisdom, but loyal and the best sailor along the coast.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was upon this hint that the Minister of War acted, executing a rare piece of drollery that so enlivened the tedium of executive session.</p>
|
||||
<p>In the constitution of this small, maritime banana republic was a forgotten section that provided for the maintenance of a navy. This provision—with many other wiser ones—had lain inert since the establishment of the republic. Anchuria had no navy and had no use for one. It was characteristic of Don Sabas—a man at once merry, learned, whimsical and audacious—that he should have disturbed the dust of this musty and sleeping statute to increase the humour of the world by so much as a smile from his indulgent colleagues.</p>
|
||||
<p>With delightful mock seriousness the Minister of War proposed the creation of a navy. He argued its need and the glories it might achieve with such gay and witty zeal that the travesty overcame with its humour even the swart dignity of President Losada himself.</p>
|
||||
<p>The champagne was bubbling trickily in the veins of the mercurial statesmen. It was not the custom of the grave governors of Anchuria to enliven their sessions with a beverage so apt to cast a veil of disparagement over sober affairs. The wine had been a thoughtful compliment tendered by the agent of the Vesuvius Fruit Company as a token of amicable relations—and certain consummated deals—between that company and the republic of Anchuria.</p>
|
||||
<p>The jest was carried to its end. A formidable, official document was prepared, encrusted with chromatic seals and jaunty with fluttering ribbons, bearing the florid signatures of state. This commission conferred upon el Señor Don Felipe Carrera the title of Flag Admiral of the Republic of Anchuria. Thus within the space of a few minutes and the dominion of a dozen “extra dry,” the country took its place among the naval powers of the world, and Felipe Carrera became entitled to a salute of nineteen guns whenever he might enter port.</p>
|
||||
<p>The southern races are lacking in that particular kind of humour that finds entertainment in the defects and misfortunes bestowed by Nature. Owing to this defect in their constitution they are not moved to laughter (as are their northern brothers) by the spectacle of the deformed, the feeble-minded or the insane.</p>
|
||||
<p>The southern races are lacking in that particular kind of humour that finds entertainment in the defects and misfortunes bestowed by Nature. Owing to this defect in their constitution they are not moved to laughter (as are their northern brothers) by the spectacle of the deformed, the feebleminded or the insane.</p>
|
||||
<p>Felipe Carrera was sent upon earth with but half his wits. Therefore, the people of Coralio called him “<i>El pobrecito loco</i>“—“the poor little crazed one”—saying that God had sent but half of him to earth, retaining the other half.</p>
|
||||
<p>A sombre youth, glowering, and speaking only at the rarest times, Felipe was but negatively “loco.” On shore he generally refused all conversation. He seemed to know that he was badly handicapped on land, where so many kinds of understanding are needed; but on the water his one talent set him equal with most men. Few sailors whom God had carefully and completely made could handle a sailboat as well. Five points nearer the wind than even the best of them he could sail his sloop. When the elements raged and set other men to cowering, the deficiencies of Felipe seemed of little importance. He was a perfect sailor, if an imperfect man. He owned no boat, but worked among the crews of the schooners and sloops that skimmed the coast, trading and freighting fruit out to the steamers where there was no harbour. It was through his famous skill and boldness on the sea, as well as for the pity felt for his mental imperfections, that he was recommended by the collector as a suitable custodian of the captured sloop.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the outcome of Don Sabas’ little pleasantry arrived in the form of the imposing and preposterous commission, the collector smiled. He had not expected such prompt and overwhelming response to his recommendation. He despatched a <i>muchacho</i> at once to fetch the future admiral.</p>
|
||||
<p>The collector waited in his official quarters. His office was in the Calle Grande, and the sea breezes hummed through its windows all day. The collector, in white linen and canvas shoes, philandered with papers on an antique desk. A parrot, perched on a pen rack, seasoned the official tedium with a fire of choice Castilian imprecations. Two rooms opened into the collector’s. In one the clerical force of young men of variegated complexions transacted with glitter and parade their several duties. Through the open door of the other room could be seen a bronze babe, guiltless of clothing, that rollicked upon the floor. In a grass hammock a thin woman, tinted a pale lemon, played a guitar and swung contentedly in the breeze. Thus surrounded by the routine of his high duties and the visible tokens of agreeable domesticity, the collector’s heart was further made happy by the power placed in his hands to brighten the fortunes of the “innocent” Felipe.</p>
|
||||
<p>Felipe came and stood before the collector. He was a lad of twenty, not ill-favoured in looks, but with an expression of distant and pondering vacuity. He wore white cotton trousers, down the seams of which he had sewed red stripes with some vague aim at military decoration. A flimsy blue shirt fell open at his throat; his feet were bare; he held in his hand the cheapest of straw hats from the States.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Señor Carrera,” said the collector, gravely, producing the showy commission, “I have sent for you at the president’s bidding. This document that I present to you confers upon you the title of Admiral of this great republic, and gives you absolute command of the naval forces and fleet of our country. You may think, friend Felipe, that we have no navy—but yes! The sloop the <i>Estrella del Noche</i>, that my brave men captured from the coast smugglers, is to be placed under your command. The boat is to be devoted to the services of your country. You will be ready at all times to convey officials of the government to points along the coast where they may be obliged to visit. You will also act as a coast-guard to prevent, as far as you may be able, the crime of smuggling. You will uphold the honour and prestige of your country at sea, and endeavour to place Anchuria among the proudest naval powers of the world. These are your instructions as the Minister of War desires me to convey them to you. <i>Por Dios!</i> I do not know how all this is to be accomplished, for not one word did his letter contain in respect to a crew or to the expenses of this navy. Perhaps you are to provide a crew yourself, Señor Admiral—I do not know—but it is a very high honour that has descended upon you. I now hand you your commission. When you are ready for the boat I will give orders that she shall be made over into your charge. That is as far as my instructions go.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Señor Carrera,” said the collector, gravely, producing the showy commission, “I have sent for you at the president’s bidding. This document that I present to you confers upon you the title of Admiral of this great republic, and gives you absolute command of the naval forces and fleet of our country. You may think, friend Felipe, that we have no navy—but yes! The sloop the <i>Estrella del Noche</i>, that my brave men captured from the coast smugglers, is to be placed under your command. The boat is to be devoted to the services of your country. You will be ready at all times to convey officials of the government to points along the coast where they may be obliged to visit. You will also act as a coastguard to prevent, as far as you may be able, the crime of smuggling. You will uphold the honour and prestige of your country at sea, and endeavour to place Anchuria among the proudest naval powers of the world. These are your instructions as the Minister of War desires me to convey them to you. <i>Por Dios!</i> I do not know how all this is to be accomplished, for not one word did his letter contain in respect to a crew or to the expenses of this navy. Perhaps you are to provide a crew yourself, Señor Admiral—I do not know—but it is a very high honour that has descended upon you. I now hand you your commission. When you are ready for the boat I will give orders that she shall be made over into your charge. That is as far as my instructions go.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Felipe took the commission that the collector handed to him. He gazed through the open window at the sea for a moment, with his customary expression of deep but vain pondering. Then he turned without having spoken a word, and walked swiftly away through the hot sand of the street.</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i>Pobrecito loco!</i>” sighed the collector; and the parrot on the pen racks screeched “Loco!—loco!—loco!”</p>
|
||||
<p>The next morning a strange procession filed through the streets to the collector’s office. At its head was the admiral of the navy. Somewhere Felipe had raked together a pitiful semblance of a military uniform—a pair of red trousers, a dingy blue short jacket heavily ornamented with gold braid, and an old fatigue cap that must have been cast away by one of the British soldiers in Belize and brought away by Felipe on one of his coasting voyages. Buckled around his waist was an ancient ship’s cutlass contributed to his equipment by Pedro Lafitte, the baker, who proudly asserted its inheritance from his ancestor, the illustrious buccaneer. At the admiral’s heels tagged his newly-shipped crew—three grinning, glossy, black Caribs, bare to the waist, the sand spurting in showers from the spring of their naked feet.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -11,7 +11,7 @@
|
||||
<h3>THE FLAG PARAMOUNT<br/> </h3>
|
||||
<p>At the head of the insurgent party appeared that Hector and learned Theban of the southern republics, Don Sabas Placido. A traveller, a soldier, a poet, a scientist, a statesman and a connoisseur—the wonder was that he could content himself with the petty, remote life of his native country.</p>
|
||||
<p>“It is a whim of Placido’s,” said a friend who knew him well, “to take up political intrigue. It is not otherwise than as if he had come upon a new <i>tempo</i> in music, a new bacillus in the air, a new scent, or rhyme, or explosive. He will squeeze this revolution dry of sensations, and a week afterward will forget it, skimming the seas of the world in his brigantine to add to his already world-famous collections. Collections of what? <i>Por Dios!</i> of everything from postage stamps to prehistoric stone idols.”</p>
|
||||
<p>But, for a mere dilettante, the æsthetic Placido seemed to be creating a lively row. The people admired him; they were fascinated by his brilliancy and flattered by his taking an interest in so small a thing as his native country. They rallied to the call of his lieutenants in the capital, where (somewhat contrary to arrangements) the army remained faithful to the government. There was also lively skirmishing in the coast towns. It was rumoured that the revolution was aided by the Vesuvius Fruit Company, the power that forever stood with chiding smile and uplifted finger to keep Anchuria in the class of good children. Two of its steamers, the <i>Traveler</i> and the <i>Salvador</i>, were known to have conveyed insurgent troops from point to point along the coast.</p>
|
||||
<p>But, for a mere dilettante, the aesthetic Placido seemed to be creating a lively row. The people admired him; they were fascinated by his brilliancy and flattered by his taking an interest in so small a thing as his native country. They rallied to the call of his lieutenants in the capital, where (somewhat contrary to arrangements) the army remained faithful to the government. There was also lively skirmishing in the coast towns. It was rumoured that the revolution was aided by the Vesuvius Fruit Company, the power that forever stood with chiding smile and uplifted finger to keep Anchuria in the class of good children. Two of its steamers, the <i>Traveler</i> and the <i>Salvador</i>, were known to have conveyed insurgent troops from point to point along the coast.</p>
|
||||
<p>As yet there had been no actual uprising in Coralio. Military law prevailed, and the ferment was bottled for the time. And then came the word that everywhere the revolutionists were encountering defeat. In the capital the president’s forces triumphed; and there was a rumour that the leaders of the revolt had been forced to fly, hotly pursued.</p>
|
||||
<p>In the little telegraph office at Coralio there was always a gathering of officials and loyal citizens, awaiting news from the seat of government. One morning the telegraph key began clicking, and presently the operator called, loudly: “One telegram for <i>el Almirante</i>, Don Señor Felipe Carrera!”</p>
|
||||
<p>There was a shuffling sound, a great rattling of tin scabbard, and the admiral, prompt at his spot of waiting, leaped across the room to receive it.</p>
|
||||
@ -22,7 +22,7 @@
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>Small glory, to be sure, in this, his country’s first call. But it had called, and joy surged in the admiral’s breast. He drew his cutlass belt to another buckle hole, roused his dozing crew, and in a quarter of an hour <i>El Nacional</i> was tacking swiftly down coast in a stiff landward breeze.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Rio Ruiz is a small river, emptying into the sea ten miles below Coralio. That portion of the coast is wild and solitary. Through a gorge in the Cordilleras rushes the Rio Ruiz, cold and bubbling, to glide, at last, with breadth and leisure, through an alluvial morass into the sea.</p>
|
||||
<p>In two hours <i>El Nacional</i> entered the river’s mouth. The banks were crowded with a disposition of formidable trees. The sumptuous undergrowth of the tropics overflowed the land, and drowned itself in the fallow waters. Silently the sloop entered there, and met a deeper silence. Brilliant with greens and ochres and floral scarlets, the umbrageous mouth of the Rio Ruiz furnished no sound or movement save of the sea-going water as it purled against the prow of the vessel. Small chance there seemed of wresting beef or provisions from that empty solitude.</p>
|
||||
<p>In two hours <i>El Nacional</i> entered the river’s mouth. The banks were crowded with a disposition of formidable trees. The sumptuous undergrowth of the tropics overflowed the land, and drowned itself in the fallow waters. Silently the sloop entered there, and met a deeper silence. Brilliant with greens and ochres and floral scarlets, the umbrageous mouth of the Rio Ruiz furnished no sound or movement save of the seagoing water as it purled against the prow of the vessel. Small chance there seemed of wresting beef or provisions from that empty solitude.</p>
|
||||
<p>The admiral decided to cast anchor, and, at the chain’s rattle, the forest was stimulated to instant and resounding uproar. The mouth of the Rio Ruiz had only been taking a morning nap. Parrots and baboons screeched and barked in the trees; a whirring and a hissing and a booming marked the awakening of animal life; a dark blue bulk was visible for an instant, as a startled tapir fought his way through the vines.</p>
|
||||
<p>The navy, under orders, hung in the mouth of the little river for hours. The crew served the dinner of shark’s fin soup, plantains, crab gumbo and sour wine. The admiral, with a three-foot telescope, closely scanned the impervious foliage fifty yards away.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was nearly sunset when a reverberating “hal-lo-o-o!” came from the forest to their left. It was answered; and three men, mounted upon mules, crashed through the tropic tangle to within a dozen yards of the river’s bank. There they dismounted; and one, unbuckling his belt, struck each mule a violent blow with his sword scabbard, so that they, with a fling of heels, dashed back again into the forest.</p>
|
||||
@ -40,7 +40,7 @@
|
||||
<p>The Caribs prepared a meal, to which the three passengers of <i>El Nacional</i> set themselves with famished delight. About sunset, as was its custom, the breeze veered and swept back from the mountains, cool and steady, bringing a taste of the stagnant lagoons and mangrove swamps that guttered the lowlands. The mainsail of the sloop was hoisted and swelled to it, and at that moment they heard shouts and a waxing clamour from the bosky profundities of the shore.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The butchers, my dear admiral,” said the large man, smiling, “too late for the slaughter.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Further than his orders to his crew, the admiral was saying nothing. The topsail and jib were spread, and the sloop glided out of the estuary. The large man and his companions had bestowed themselves with what comfort they could about the bare deck. Belike, the thing big in their minds had been their departure from that critical shore; and now that the hazard was so far reduced their thoughts were loosed to the consideration of further deliverance. But when they saw the sloop turn and fly up coast again they relaxed, satisfied with the course the admiral had taken.</p>
|
||||
<p>The large man sat at ease, his spirited blue eye engaged in the contemplation of the navy’s commander. He was trying to estimate this sombre and fantastic lad, whose impenetrable stolidity puzzled him. Himself a fugitive, his life sought, and chafing under the smart of defeat and failure, it was characteristic of him to transfer instantly his interest to the study of a thing new to him. It was like him, too, to have conceived and risked all upon this last desperate and madcap scheme—this message to a poor, crazed <i>fanatico</i> cruising about with his grotesque uniform and his farcical title. But his companions had been at their wits’ end; escape had seemed incredible; and now he was pleased with the success of the plan they had called crack-brained and precarious.</p>
|
||||
<p>The large man sat at ease, his spirited blue eye engaged in the contemplation of the navy’s commander. He was trying to estimate this sombre and fantastic lad, whose impenetrable stolidity puzzled him. Himself a fugitive, his life sought, and chafing under the smart of defeat and failure, it was characteristic of him to transfer instantly his interest to the study of a thing new to him. It was like him, too, to have conceived and risked all upon this last desperate and madcap scheme—this message to a poor, crazed <i>fanatico</i> cruising about with his grotesque uniform and his farcical title. But his companions had been at their wits’ end; escape had seemed incredible; and now he was pleased with the success of the plan they had called crackbrained and precarious.</p>
|
||||
<p>The brief, tropic twilight seemed to slide swiftly into the pearly splendour of a moonlit night. And now the lights of Coralio appeared, distributed against the darkening shore to their right. The admiral stood, silent, at the tiller; the Caribs, like black panthers, held the sheets, leaping noiselessly at his short commands. The three passengers were watching intently the sea before them, and when at length they came in sight of the bulk of a steamer lying a mile out from the town, with her lights radiating deep into the water, they held a sudden voluble and close-headed converse. The sloop was speeding as if to strike midway between ship and shore.</p>
|
||||
<p>The large man suddenly separated from his companions and approached the scarecrow at the helm.</p>
|
||||
<p>“My dear admiral,” he said, “the government has been exceedingly remiss. I feel all the shame for it that only its ignorance of your devoted service has prevented it from sustaining. An inexcusable oversight has been made. A vessel, a uniform and a crew worthy of your fidelity shall be furnished you. But just now, dear admiral, there is business of moment afoot. The steamer lying there is the <i>Salvador</i>. I and my friends desire to be conveyed to her, where we are sent on the government’s business. Do us the favour to shape your course accordingly.”</p>
|
||||
|
@ -31,7 +31,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Elsewhere than at Coralio one learns of the impetuous career of Isabel Guilbert. New Orleans gave her birth and the mingled French and Spanish creole nature that tinctured her life with such turbulence and warmth. She had little education, but a knowledge of men and motives that seemed to have come by instinct. Far beyond the common woman was she endowed with intrepid rashness, with a love for the pursuit of adventure to the brink of danger, and with desire for the pleasures of life. Her spirit was one to chafe under any curb; she was Eve after the fall, but before the bitterness of it was felt. She wore life as a rose in her bosom.</p>
|
||||
<p>Of the legion of men who had been at her feet it was said that but one was so fortunate as to engage her fancy. To President Miraflores, the brilliant but unstable ruler of Anchuria, she yielded the key to her resolute heart. How, then, do we find her (as the Coralians would have told you) the wife of Frank Goodwin, and happily living a life of dull and dreamy inaction?</p>
|
||||
<p>The underlying threads reach far, stretching across the sea. Following them out it will be made plain why “Shorty” O’Day, of the Columbia Detective Agency, resigned his position. And, for a lighter pastime, it shall be a duty and a pleasing sport to wander with Momus beneath the tropic stars where Melpomene once stalked austere. Now to cause laughter to echo from those lavish jungles and frowning crags where formerly rang the cries of pirates’ victims; to lay aside pike and cutlass and attack with quip and jollity; to draw one saving titter of mirth from the rusty casque of Romance—this were pleasant to do in the shade of the lemon-trees on that coast that is curved like lips set for smiling.</p>
|
||||
<p>For there are yet tales of the Spanish Main. That segment of continent washed by the tempestuous Caribbean, and presenting to the sea a formidable border of tropical jungle topped by the overweening Cordilleras, is still begirt by mystery and romance. In past times buccaneers and revolutionists roused the echoes of its cliffs, and the condor wheeled perpetually above where, in the green groves, they made food for him with their matchlocks and toledos. Taken and retaken by sea rovers, by adverse powers and by sudden uprising of rebellious factions, the historic 300 miles of adventurous coast has scarcely known for hundreds of years whom rightly to call its master. Pizarro, Balboa, Sir Francis Drake, and Bolivar did what they could to make it a part of Christendom. Sir John Morgan, Lafitte and other eminent swash-bucklers bombarded and pounded it in the name of Abaddon.</p>
|
||||
<p>For there are yet tales of the Spanish Main. That segment of continent washed by the tempestuous Caribbean, and presenting to the sea a formidable border of tropical jungle topped by the overweening Cordilleras, is still begirt by mystery and romance. In past times buccaneers and revolutionists roused the echoes of its cliffs, and the condor wheeled perpetually above where, in the green groves, they made food for him with their matchlocks and toledos. Taken and retaken by sea rovers, by adverse powers and by sudden uprising of rebellious factions, the historic 300 miles of adventurous coast has scarcely known for hundreds of years whom rightly to call its master. Pizarro, Balboa, Sir Francis Drake, and Bolivar did what they could to make it a part of Christendom. Sir John Morgan, Lafitte and other eminent swashbucklers bombarded and pounded it in the name of Abaddon.</p>
|
||||
<p>The game still goes on. The guns of the rovers are silenced; but the tintype man, the enlarged photograph brigand, the kodaking tourist and the scouts of the gentle brigade of fakirs have found it out, and carry on the work. The hucksters of Germany, France, and Sicily now bag its small change across their counters. Gentleman adventurers throng the waiting-rooms of its rulers with proposals for railways and concessions. The little <i>opéra-bouffe</i> nations play at government and intrigue until some day a big, silent gunboat glides into the offing and warns them not to break their toys. And with these changes comes also the small adventurer, with empty pockets to fill, light of heart, busy-brained—the modern fairy prince, bearing an alarm clock with which, more surely than by the sentimental kiss, to awaken the beautiful tropics from their centuries’ sleep. Generally he wears a shamrock, which he matches pridefully against the extravagant palms; and it is he who has driven Melpomene to the wings, and set Comedy to dancing before the footlights of the Southern Cross.</p>
|
||||
<p>So, there is a little tale to tell of many things. Perhaps to the promiscuous ear of the Walrus it shall come with most avail; for in it there are indeed shoes and ships and sealing-wax and cabbage-palms and presidents instead of kings.</p>
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<p>Add to these a little love and counterplotting, and scatter everywhere throughout the maze a trail of tropical dollars—dollars warmed no more by the torrid sun than by the hot palms of the scouts of Fortune—and, after all, here seems to be Life, itself, with talk enough to weary the most garrulous of Walruses.</p>
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